Brownish Mycena     Subgenus

This is a key to gilled mushrooms, that is, mushrooms having a definite cap with a fertile surface consisting of gills. The fruiting body usually also has a stem, although that may be lateral or absent (usually, then, the mushroom is growing from wood). You can use this key to identify mushrooms that you find.

Fruiting body containing fibers (usually in the stalk)

Spore print "light-colored": white or buff, sometimes tinged with pink or tan. Greenish and (except for the Russulales) yellow spore prints also go here
Stalk fibrous, not fracturing like a piece of chalk

None of the special features distinguishing the other white-spored genera:
Gills not free, as in the Lepiotas and Amanitas
Basidia not extra-long, as in the Hygrophoraceae
Spores smooth, except for Lentinellus

Growing on trees or dead wood, leaves, or sticks, or organic debris, often in moss

Shaped like a “normal mushroom”
Small and fragile to medium-sized, except for one large, grey-capped species

Fruiting body small: cap up to 1 1/4" across (and most clearly smaller than that)

Cap bell-shaped, conical, or either of those with an umbo; margin never incurved; usually some shade of grey or brown, but purplish in one unusually large species.
Stem thin; either very fragile or very tough
Some species have a colored juice that can be squeezed out of the end of the stem
No rhizomorphs

Diagnosis

• Cap some shade(s) of brown, grey, black and white, with no other colors

Narrow down your identification:

Odor of bleach (sometimes faint)
Cap up to 3/4" across; blackish at first but soon fading
Gills sometimes aging reddish-brown in spots
In groups on coniferous wood

Cap up to 1/4" across; purplish to vinaceous brown at first, fading to pale grey; covered at first with a white powder; deeply plicate
On bark
Stem also powdery at first, with a few white hairs at the base

Cap some shade of brown or grey, up to 3" across; bell-shaped with inrolled margin when young, spreading out in maturity but remaining darker at the disk
Stalk up to 1/4" thick, brittle, glabrous
On deciduous wood

Cap up to 1 1/4" across; greyish brown at center, lightening to a whitish margin; conical at first, expanding to umbonate with an uplifted margin; margin scalloped
Stem whitish above, shading to reddish brown below; flecked with tiny white mycelial patches
Cestipose on decaying hardwood stumps, especially oak

Cap and gills bruising reddish-brown, or developing reddish-brown spots in age
Basic cap coloration white to greyish brown

Lookalikes: Mycena haematopus Cap and stem exuding a dark red latex when cut and squeezed Cap up to 2" across, reddish brown or vinaceous on disk; margin lighter and greyer, often translucent-striate; oval (almost hemispherical) with a scalloped edge, becoming campanulate as the cap starts to open, and finally umbonate with an uplifted margin

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