Summary:
Features include 1) a golden yellow cap covered with tiny brownish black fibrillose scales, 2) yellow flesh, 3) gills that are adnate, crowded, narrow, and yellow, 4) a yellow stem that is minutely scaly, 5) growth on conifer logs, and 6) a white spore deposit. It is common in the Pacific Northwest.

Cap:
3-6cm across, "convex at first, becoming centrally depressed"; deep golden yellow, covered with tiny, brownish black fibrillose scales, especially at center, (Phillips), 3-7(9)cm across, conic-convex at first, later convex to flat, often somewhat umbonate, rarely umbilicate, margin incurved at first; gold-yellow, covered with fine olive-brown or dark brown squamules [fine scales], arranged concentrically, (Breitenbach), surface appearing moist below the fibrillose scales, the tips of the scales grayish to fuscous brown at least over disc, the ground color some shade of yellow, (Smith)

Flesh:
deep yellow (Phillips), thick at disc, thin on margin; yellow, (Breitenbach), firm but becoming flabby (Smith)

Gills:
"adnate, crowded, narrow; yellow", (Phillips), notched, 50-55 reaching stem, 3-9 subgills between neighboring gills, gills narrow; gold-yellow; edges smooth, (Breitenbach), "broadly adnate to adnexed or with a decurrent tooth, often readily seceding", moderately broad (0.5-0.7cm) and close (1-3 tiers of subgills); bright yellow or finally tinged orange; edges even or becoming slightly crenulate [scalloped], (Smith)

Stem:
3-6cm x 0.3-1cm, "occasionally off-center; yellow; minutely scaly", (Phillips), 3-7cm x 0.6-1cm, equal, sometimes bent and off-center, solid to hollow; sulphur-yellow; longitudinally fibrillose, brownish-floccose toward top, (Breitenbach), 4-6(8)cm x 0.5-1cm, equal or nearly so, hollow; pale yellow; bald or nearly so, "when perfectly fresh with scattered grayish fibrils toward the base and the apex faintly yellow-pruinose", (Smith)

Odor:
almost none (Breitenbach), not distinctive (Smith)

Taste:
mild to bitterish (Breitenbach), mild (Smith)

Microscopic spores:
spores 6-7.5 x 4.5-5 microns, elliptic, smooth, [presumably inamyloid], (Phillips), spores 6.2-8.4 x 4.2-5.4 microns, elliptic, smooth, iodine negative, with droplets; basidia 4-spored, 30-36 x 6-7 microns, narrowly clavate, with basal clamp connection; pleurocystidia none, cheilocystidia abundant, 25-50 x 6-15 microns, "clavate-vesicular, more rarely cylindric-ventricose", with yellowish contents; cap cuticle of +/- parallel, somewhat intertwined hyphae 3.5-12 microns wide, "yellow-brown pigmented, with dark brown-pigmented hyphal ends exserted in bundles (squamules)"; clamps on cap cuticle, basidia, (Breitenbach), spores 6-7.5 x 4.5-5 microns, subelliptic, smooth, inamyloid; basidia 2-spored and 4-spored on a single cap, 28-34 x 6-7 microns, colorless but with oil droplets in KOH; pleurocystidia rare, 34-42 x 5-8 microns, "subcylindric with thin wavy walls and hardly projecting beyond the basidia", but in one collection abundant and projecting up to 12 microns, cheilocystidia abundant, 36-62 x 9-20 microns, "clavate, saccate, or fusoid-ventricose", yellowish to orange as revived in KOH; clamp connections present, (Smith)

Spore deposit:
white (Phillips, Smith)

Notes:
Smith(42) examined material from WA, OR, ID, NS, ON, CA, CO, ME, MI, NC, NY, OH, TN, and Sweden. There are collections from BC at the Pacific Forestry Centre and the University of British Columbia. Breitenbach(3) gave the distribution as North America, Europe, and Asia.

EDIBILITY

unknown (Phillips)