Lentinellus     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

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

All mushrooms with serrated gills go here
If the stem is central and well-developed, then the fruiting body (even the cap) is large and extremely tough

Lentinellus     Genus     Karsten

Diagnosis

• Fruiting body flexible, sessile or with a very short stipe
  
• Cap up to four inches across, often furry
  
• Spores spiny; amyloid or with amyloid spines; nearly round

• Spores amyloid, bumpy

Narrow down your identification:

Like Lentinellus ursinus, except
Cap up to 3" across
Gills narrow, crowded

Stem marginal (occasionally central); furrowed; fusing at the base with other stems in the cluster
Cap up to 2" across; dark reddish brown to light pinkish tan; semi-circular at first, becoming heart-shaped as it extends back around the stem; lobed in maturity, margin wavy
Densely cestipose on deciduous stumps and buried wood

Cap up to 2" across; beize darkening to brown; hygrophanous
Stalk usually furrowed; more or less concolorous with cap
Taste acrid

Cap sessile, broadly attached to substrate; up to 5" wide, 2" deep; fan- or kidney-shaped; yellow-brown to reddish brown; covered with velvety or fuzzy dark-brown hairs, at least near the attachment
Gills broad, subdistant

Cap stipitate, up to 4 1/2" wide, fan- or kidney-shaped; pale pinkish or pinkish-brown with some darker brown streaks; covered with velvety or fuzzy white fur; margin inrolled at first
Stalk marginal, lateral; fuzzy and colored like cap

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