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Species Information
Summary: {See also Xeromphalina Table.} Features include 1) a moist, bald, yellow-brown to orange-brown cap, 2) adnate, yellowish gills, 3) a reddish brown stem with the lower part black, with orange hairs over whole length, the stem base tawny-strigose, 4) a bitter taste, and 5) growth on conifer debris.
Collections were examined from BC, WA, OR, ID, and AK, (Redhead(2) who says it is a common species along the west coast and in the interior wet belt in BC and ranges as far south as CA).
Cap: 1-2.5cm across, "convex to flattened; bright yellow-brown to paler at margin"; bald, (Phillips), 1-2.5(5)cm across, with collybioid aspect, convex to flat, the margin incurved at first and often remaining decurved [downcurved]; bright yellow brown ("Sudan brown") on disc, "ochraceous tawny" on margin, cap at times "ochraceous orange" to "zinc-orange", fading very slowly; smooth, bald, moist, (Smith)
Flesh: pliant and tough (consistency rubbery), reviving when moistened; colored as surface, (Smith)
Gills: adnate, crowded; yellowish, (Phillips), adnate, close (appearing distant when cap broadly expanded), 24-30 reaching stem, narrow to moderately broad, 3 tiers of subgills; "warm buff" or more brownish (whitish only when very young); edges even, (Smith)
Stem: 2-8cm x 0.1-0.25cm, "reddish brown to black at base; tomentose, hairy at base", (Phillips), hairs at base orange (Arora), 2-8cm x 0.1-0.25cm, equal, tough, stuffed with tawny fibrils; ''ferruginous to blackish brown and covered over its entire length with "zinc-orange" tomentum, base tawny strigose and often deeply buried in the debris, extreme apex yellowish and pruinose pubescent'', (Smith), rhizomorphs present (Redhead)
Odor: pleasant (Phillips), none (Smith)
Taste: bitter (Phillips), bitterish (Smith)
Microscopic spores: spores 4.5-6 x 1.5-2 microns, long oval, smooth, [presumably amyloid], (Phillips), spores 4.5-6 x 1.7-2 microns, cylindric or in side view slightly curved, smooth, pale bluish in Melzer''s reagent; basidia 4-spored, 18-24 x 4-5 microns; pleurocystidia rare to abundant, 20-32 x 3-9 microns, fusoid-ventricose at first, soon elongating greatly and with a flexuous [wavy] hair-like prolongation projecting from hymenium, thin-walled, colorless in KOH, cheilocystidia similar to pleurocystidia; "gill trama of interwoven thick-walled subgelatinous (in KOH) brown to pallid hyphae" (with "glassy" appearance in KOH); cap trama with surface pellicle of subgelatinous hyphae about 2 microns wide, "but this layer easily obliterated and often not demonstrable, beneath it a hypoderm of enlarged yellow-brown cells, the remainder of compactly interwoven hyphae similar to those of the gill trama"; clamp connections present, (Smith), spores 4.5-6 x 1.7-2 microns, narrowly allantoid; pileocystidia coralloid; based on the subgenus the upper part of the cap trama would be gelatinized and the lower part of thick-walled, glassy hyphae, (Redhead)
Spore deposit: white (Phillips)
Habitat / Range
scattered on conifer debris (Phillips), single to scattered on debris of conifers, more rarely on alder, spring and fall, key says typically gregarious to scattered or only in clusters of a few fruiting bodies, (Smith)
Similar Species
Xeromphalina campanella has decurrent gills, a mild taste, clustered growth on logs, and larger spores. Xeromphalina brunneola has decurrent gills, clustered growth on logs, and wider spores. Xeromphalina campanelloides has habitat on rotting conifer wood, wider spores, and other microscopic differences. Xeromphalina cornui has decurrent to arcuate-decurrent gills, a mild taste, and larger spores. Xeromphalina cirris has a mild taste, habitat on conifer needles, usually in the mountains, and larger, broadly elliptic to broadly ovoid spores. Xeromphalina cauticinalis ssp. cauticinalis has short-decurrent gills, wider spores, and other microscopic differences. Xeromphalina parvibulbosa has gills that are arcuate to adnate with a short tooth to short-decurrent, a mild to astringent or bitter taste, and larger spores.
