Pluteus petasatus

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)

Spores pink or reddish

Gills free
Often growing on wood

Lacking a volva
Growing on wood or woody debris
Typically bluntly conical or campanulate when young, becoming umbonate (often a flat cap with a very small umbo) in age
Often somewhat scaly or fibrillose on the disk

Cap white or light grey; sometimes with more darkly-colored fibrils

Pluteus petasatus     (Fries) C. C. Gillet

Here are the characters that distinguish this species from the others in its group. For its more general characters, see higher up on the page.
If there's just a few words or a microscopic feature here, a more thorough description can be found above.

Diagnosis

• Cap up to 6" across; whitish; disk browner or greyer from scales or fibrils, often cracked
  
• Often cestipose
  
• Stalk sometimes virgate, darkening at the base in age

Microscropic Characters

• Spores 6-9 x 4-6 µm
  
• Pleurocystidia horned

Comments

3

It seems that whenever you find any robust, fibrillose Pluteus, it ends up keying out here. For instance, the first Pluteus I ever found had a grey cap with flattened tufts of salmon-colored fibrils. I took it to Clarke T. Rogerson, and he called it P. petasatus. Similarly, the mushroom in this photo ended up being called petasatus, though I'm not sure anymore who made the attribution
The stature is more robust, and the flesh firmer than yer average Pluteus, and its growth in clusters is actually an important feature in identifying it


 

 

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