Camarophyllus     Genus

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

Gills (at least) with a distinct waxy or silky feel, due to unusually long basidia
No annulus, armilla or volva
Cap often slimy
They tend to grow in cold areas, and sometimes fruit at times when it's too cold for other mushrooms
Several have an insulating slimy universal veil. This veil leaves the cap and the stalk slimy, except for the upper stalk where the gills covered it when the mushroom was a button.

Camarophyllus     Genus     (Fries) Kummer

Diagnosis

• Gills decurrent, giving the mushroom a vase-like appearance in profile (unless the cap is umbonate, in which case it has a "dancing mushroom from Fantasia" profile)
  
• Cap less than 2" across; usually not viscid or slimy; usually white or some dull color (except for the one species shown in the picture)
  
• All clearly decurrent, non-slimy Hygrophoraceae can be keyed out here

Microscropic Characters

• Gill trama interwoven

Narrow down your identification:

Cap up to 4" across; orange to buff, sometimes tinged with salmon; sometimes umbonate; margin often sinuate
Gills distant
Gills and flesh colored a lighter version of the cap color
In meadows and forests

Cap up to 2 3/8" across; hygrophanous; grey violet to brownish violet, at least on the margin; center fading first to light grey
Gills, flesh and stalk whitish, sometimes tinged with cap color

Cap up to 2" across; moist and/or waxy
Entire fruiting body white, with perhaps some yellow or tan tinges

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