Xeromphalina     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

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

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

Xeromphalina     Genus     R. Kühner & R. Maire

Diagnosis

• Stem dark, tough
  
• Gills often yellow (sometimes pale) or orange, typically decurrent
  
• Revenant
  
• Context turns pink to red with KOH

Microscropic Characters

• Spores amyloid

Narrow down your identification:

Cap up to 1" across, yellowish tan to orange to cinnamon brown; margin incurved at first, striate
Stalk usually curved, reddish brown, lightening upwards to gills; base covered with a dense tuft of long, bright, tawny hairs
Cestipose, very numerous, on coniferous wood
Gills a little lighter than cap

Looks like Xeromphalina campanella, but
on deciduous wood, especially oak
Stalk usually straight instead of curved

Cap up to 2 3/4" across; convex, becoming flat and margin becoming extremely wavy; orange brown with an olive tinge when fresh
Stalk concolorous, velutinate
Cestipose, very numerous, on coniferous wood
Gills white, becoming pale yellow in age

Glossary

Mushrooms

People

Newsletter

Events