Panellus     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

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

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

Links from Look-alikes PunctoLignoTrich     Tribe Fruiting body less than an inch across; sometimes with a short, stubby stalk; often sessile, attached to the substrate by a single point of attachment, with the gills originating at this point

Panellus     Genus     Karsten

Diagnosis

• Flesh tough
  
• Spores long: elliptical, cylindrical, or sausage-shaped; amyloid

Narrow down your identification:

Cap up to 1/2" across, white to pale pinkish grey; often with a gelatinous layer when young
Gills concolorous
On coniferous wood, especially larch

Cap pinkish grey to purple.
Gills pinkish grey
Stalk canescent

Cap up to 4" across, fan- or kidney-shaped, margin incurved; dark yellowish green, often with brown and purple tones
Spore print yellowish

Cap up to 1 1/4" across; fan- to kidney-shaped; minutely hairy or scurfy; dingy white to pale brown
Stem stubby, hairy, concolorous
Cestipose or grouped on dead hardwoods

Cap up to 5/8" across; purplish brown, with short fine white hairs
Gills forked or cross-veined; lighter version of cap color
On decaying coniferous wood

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