Summary:
Features include 1) a viscid, bald cap that is pale to dark vinaceous brown, 2) close white gills that become grayish brown, 3) a stem that is appressed-fibrillose above the membranous ring and scurfy below the ring, 4) growth on debris under conifers, 5) a dark yellow brown spore deposit, and 6) microscopic characters. The description derived (except where noted) from Smith(3).

Cap:
(2)4-8cm across, broadly convex when young, may expand to slightly umbonate or flat; pale to dark vinaceous brown, margin paler, umbo slightly darker; bald, viscid, "smooth or somewhat papillate to rugulose from wrinkling of the pellicle"

Flesh:
thick on disc, gradually thinner to the margin, soft, pliant; white or whitish

Gills:
bluntly adnate, with a decurrent tooth, or slightly depressed around stem, "close or nearly so, moderately broad"; white becoming dark avellaneous ("wood-brown" - Ridgway(1) color); edges white; edges crenate [scalloped]

Stem:
5-10cm x 0.4-1cm, equal, hollow; "white and appressed-fibrillose or floccose" above the ring, the lower part discolored, or more rarely yellowish; scurfy [tiny flakes] below ring, but base nearly bald, base usually with numerous white rhizomorphs

Veil:
"more or less median, broad, membranous, white, persistent" ring, that is striate on upper surface and white floccose on lower surface

Odor:
fungus-like

Microscopic spores:
spores 7-9 x 4-5.5 microns, elliptic to ovate in face view, subelliptic [somewhat elliptic] to obscurely inequilateral in side view, "germ pore very minute (apex not truncate), in KOH dull cinnamon, in Melzer''s about the same"; basidia 4-spored, 25-32 x 6-8 microns, clavate, colorless in KOH, yellowish in Melzer''s reagent; pleurocystidia [chrysocystidia] abundant, 30-50(60) x 5-12 microns, clavate to mucronate, wall thin, smooth, and colorless, "content as revived in KOH coagulated into a refractive amorphous mass usually resting in upper third of cystidium, in Melzer''s reagent this mass ochraceous to orange-brown to dull red", cheilocystidia 20-56 x 3-7 microns, "filamentose-subcapitate, pedicel flexuous, smooth, thin-walled, content homogeneous"; all hyphae inamyloid; clamp connections present

Spore deposit:
"cinnamon-brown" [Ridgway(1) color] (dark yellow brown)

Notes:
Smith(3) examined collections from WA, OR, and CA. There are collections from BC at the University of British Columbia (as Pholiota and as Stropharia).

EDIBILITY

questionable (Scates)

Synonyms and Alternate Names:
Pholiota albivelata Murrill