Small Ligno Trich     Subtribe

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

Diagnosis

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

Narrow down your identification:

• Fruiting body usually possessing purple pigments (showing up as lilac to lavender) which fade with age
  
• Flesh buff to lilac, inamyloid
  
• Gills crowded to very crowded
  
• Stem with long hairs at the base

• Some of the spores staining vinaceous in KOH or upon drying
  
• Rest of the fruiting body (especially the gills) tending to stain slightly vinaceous upon drying or in KOH
  
• Growing on very rotten wood

• Grows in very dense clusters on wood, which is sometimes very decayed
  
• Cap margin uplifted in age, but usually without losing central umbo

• Growing only on pine cones or other woody fruits (magnolia cones, tulip-tree fruits)
  
• Cap usually less than 3/4" across

• The genus is defined by a sticky cap, and prominent pleurocystidia.
  
• It tends to grow directly on wood, and is a little bit bigger (cap 3/4" - 1.5") than the other small white-spored things that fruit on wood

• Cap usually white; convex becoming flat, plicate in maturity; often thin to the point of being translucent
  
• Gills usually very, very distant ("few and far between" says Arora (1986) ), often forking or with cross-veins
  
• Stem thin but not wiry; often much darker than cap, at least towards the base in maturity
  
• Often with wiry rhizomorphs

• Basically, the members of this genus can look like members of any other SmallLignoTrich.
  
• You might want to check here first if your mushroom is very small, has a thin, wiry stem or is revenant. Or if it looks like the picture. :-)
  
• Else, check this genus if you can't find your mushroom anywhere else

• Fruiting body arising from black rhizomorphs
  
• Usually revenant
  
• Odor foul
  
• Stalk hairy or scurfy

• Cap bell-shaped, conical, or either of those with an umbo; margin never incurved; usually some shade of grey or brown, but purplish in one unusually large species.
  
• Stem thin; either very fragile or very tough
  
• Some species have a colored juice that can be squeezed out of the end of the stem
  
• No rhizomorphs

• Mature fruiting body with an omphalos, never bell-shaped or conical. Never even flat except when very young.
  
• Usually more colorful than the other choices
  
• Often growing in or among a lichen

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

• Cap up to 1/2" across
  
• Entire fruiting body white or whitish
  
• Gills and stem often sticky from tiny beads of resin

• Very small, orangish, growing in moss
  
• Spores inamyloid
  
• Special cystidia

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