Yellow Hygrocybe     Section

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

Gills (at least) with a distinct waxy or silky feel, due to unusually long basidia
No annulus, armilla or volva
Cap often slimy
They tend to grow in cold areas, and sometimes fruit at times when it's too cold for other mushrooms
Several have an insulating slimy universal veil. This veil leaves the cap and the stalk slimy, except for the upper stalk where the gills covered it when the mushroom was a button.

Hygrocybe     Genus Cap up to 2" across, usually less than 1" across; almost always slimy; often brightly colored Often in moss Stem often fragile and hollow

Links from Look-alikes Camarophyllus     Genus Gills decurrent, giving the mushroom a vase-like appearance in profile (unless the cap is umbonate, in which case it has a "dancing mushroom from Fantasia" profile) Cap less than 2" across; usually not viscid or slimy; usually white or some dull color (except for the one species shown in the picture) All clearly decurrent, non-slimy Hygrophoraceae can be keyed out here

Diagnosis

• Entire fruiting body yellow, golden, or yellowish orange
  
• No red coloration present

Narrow down your identification:

Cap up to 2 3/4" across; gently convex; bright yellow or golden, sometimes orangish on the disk; viscid
Gills and flesh yellow
Stalk a little less viscid than the cap; yellow to golden, with whitish base

Cap up to 1 1/2" across; broadly conical at first, then umbonate and eventually almost flat; tacky
Entire fruiting body bright yellow
Gills remaining bright even after the cap has faded
Found all over the place: on the ground in forests, at the edge of sphagnum bogs, and on very rotten wood

Cap up to 1 1/2" across; broadly conical at first, then umbonate and eventually almost flat; tacky; bright yellow to yellowish orange
Gills brilliant "fire cone" orange, remaining bright even after the cap has faded
Stem yellow or pale yellowish orange
Found all over the place: on the ground in forests, at the edge of sphagnum bogs, and on very rotten wood

Cap up to 1 5/8" across; broadly convex, often umbilicate; yellowish orange or yellow; becoming scurfy in age
Gills sometimes subdecurrent; bright yellow at first

Cap up to 1 1/2" across; depressed to funnel-shaped; yellow, fading to creamy white
Gills yellow, decurrent, fading like the cap but more slowly
Stalk hollow, fragile; concolorous with cap
Cap and stalk sticky, according to A. E. Bessette, D. W. Fischer & A. R. Bessette (1997)

Lookalikes: Mycena epipterygia Pileus yellow, fading; up to 3/4" across. Stalk bright yellow. Bright Nolaneas     Section Cap acutely conical Spores pink

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