Normal LignoTrich     Tribe

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

Diagnosis

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

Narrow down your identification:

• Fruiting body medium-sized to large
  
• Cap grey to brown, sometimes with radiating with dark brown to black fibrils
  
• All else white or concolorous with cap
  
• Growing on wood or duff

• Cap distinctly greyish, often with sparse black fibrils
  
• Gills quite deep, almost distant
  
• White rhizomorphs attached to base of stalk
  
• Growth habit solitary to several
  
• No annulus

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

• All or almost all of the fruiting body bright yellow to orange yellow
  
• Often powdery, finely scaly, or furry
  
• In one case, pictured here, just the gills are yellow

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