Xeromphalina fulvipes

Description

Xeromphalina fulvipes is a species of fungi in the family Mycenaceae. It is a yellow-brown cap with a bitter taste, usually fruits on conifer debris but is said by Smith to fruit "more rarely on alder". It has adnate gills.

Mushroom Identification

1. Cap

   1-2.5cm across, "convex to flattened; bright yellow-brown to paler at margin"; bald, (Phillips), 1-2.5(5)cm across, with collybioid aspect, convex to flat, the margin incurved at first and often remaining decurved [downcurved]; bright yellow-brown ("Sudan brown") on disc, "ochraceous tawny" on margin, cap at times "ochraceous orange" to "zinc-orange", fading very slowly; smooth, bald, moist.

2. Flesh

   Pliant and tough (consistency rubbery), reviving when moistened; colored as surface.

3. Gills

   Adnate, crowded; yellowish, (Phillips), adnate, close (appearing distant when cap broadly expanded), 24-30 reaching stem, narrow to moderately broad, 3 tiers of subgills; "warm buff" or more brownish (whitish only when very young); edges even.

4. Stem

   2-8cm x 0.1-0.25cm, "reddish-brown to black at base; tomentose, hairy at base", (Phillips), hairs at base orange (Arora), 2-8cm x 0.1-0.25cm, equal, tough, stuffed with tawny fibrils; ''ferruginous to blackish brown and covered over its entire length with "zinc-orange" tomentum, base tawny strigose and often deeply buried in the debris, extreme apex yellowish and pruinose pubescent'', (Smith), rhizomorphs present (Redhead).

5. Odor and Taste

   Pleasant odor with a bitter taste.

6. Microscopic Spores

   Spores 4.5-6 x 1.5-2 microns, long oval, smooth, [presumably amyloid], (Phillips), spores 4.5-6 x 1.7-2 microns, cylindric or in side view slightly curved, smooth, pale bluish in Melzer''s reagent; basidia 4-spored, 18-24 x 4-5 microns; pleurocystidia rare to abundant, 20-32 x 3-9 microns, fusoid-ventricose at first, soon elongating greatly and with a flexuous [wavy] hair-like prolongation projecting from hymenium, thin-walled, colorless in KOH, cheilocystidia similar to pleurocystidia; "gill trama of interwoven thick-walled subgelatinous (in KOH) brown to pallid hyphae" (with "glassy" appearance in KOH); cap trama with surface pellicle of subgelatinous hyphae about 2 microns wide, "but this layer easily obliterated and often not demonstrable, beneath it a hypoderm of enlarged yellow-brown cells, the remainder of compactly interwoven hyphae similar to those of the gill trama"; clamp connections present, (Smith), spores 4.5-6 x 1.7-2 microns, narrowly allantoid; pileocystidia coralloid; based on the subgenus the upper part of the cap trama would be gelatinized and the lower part of thick-walled, glassy hyphae, (Redhead).

7. Spore Print

   White.

Look-Alikes

1. Xeromphalina campanella

   Has decurrent gills, a mild taste, clustered growth on logs, and larger spores.

2. Xeromphalina brunneola

   Has decurrent gills, clustered growth on logs, and wider spores.

3. Xeromphalina campanelloides

   Has habitat on rotting conifer wood, wider spores, and other microscopic differences.

4. Xeromphalina cornui

   Has decurrent to arcuate-decurrent gills, a mild taste, and larger spores.

5. Xeromphalina cirris

   Has a mild taste, habitat on conifer needles, usually in the mountains, and larger, broadly elliptic to broadly ovoid spores.

6. Xeromphalina cauticinalis ssp. cauticinalis

   Has short-decurrent gills, wider spores, and other microscopic differences.

7. Xeromphalina parvibulbosa

   Has gills that are arcuate to adnate with a short tooth to short-decurrent, a mild to astringent or bitter taste, and larger spores.

Photo sources:

Photo 1 - Author: Jacob Kalichman (Pulk) (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Photo 2 - Author: Rand Workman (Ranmofod) (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Photo 3 - Author: Rand Workman (Ranmofod) (CC BY-SA 3.0)