Lepidella     Section

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)

Fruiting body having a combination of some of the following characteristics:
Stalk growing out of a cup of cottony tissue called a volva (all white-spored mushrooms with a volva go here)
Cap with scattered patches or flakes of the same sort of tissue as the volva (see second picture), easily peeled off
Annulus (skirt-like ring on stalk)

Diagnosis

• Annulus present
  
• Volva absent; base of stalk swollen and rooting
  
• Universal veil material often very powdery, or leaving very pointy remnants on the cap
  
• Cap usually white or grey

Microscropic Characters

• Spores amyloid

Narrow down your identification:

Basal bulb becoming much wider than the stalk very suddenly
Fruiting body completely white

Entire fruiting body white
Basal bulb covered with lumps and flakes of universal veil material; with partial vertical clefts; often ringed at the top with tooth-like fragments of universal veil material; gently sloping at top and bottom

Entire fruiting body white
Universal veil material very powdery, covering entire stem with tiny flakes that come off on your hands whenever you handle the mushroom
Basal bulb only a slight, smooth swelling

Cap pale grey to white; up to 4" across; covered with dark, pointy, brownish grey pieces of universal veil material; margin often hung with white scraps of partial veil material
Annulus absent
Basal bulb (not shown in picture), scaly, sloping gradually above and below, rooting

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