The North American species of Pholiota, by Alexander H. Smith and L. R. Hesler.

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The North American Species of Pholiota

tinous layer, scales frequently disappearing before maturity, in age often
glabrous and appearing fibrillose-streaked beneath the gluten, margin
usually fringed with fibrils when young. Context moderately thick, watery
cartilaginous to soft and pliant, white to (in age) yellowish; odor faintly
fragrant or lacking, taste mild or nearly so.
Lamellae adnate to sinuate, sometimes merely depressed, close, moderately broad, thin, white to yellowish ("ivory-yellow"), becoming avellaneous and finally dingy clay-color, edges even or nearly so.
Stipe 4-8 (11) cm long, 3-8 (10) mm thick, solid but becoming hollow, equal above a subbulbous base or base not enlarged, cortex brownish
in base, yellowish to pallid above, surface over lower portion covered by
dingy vinaceous brown floccose-fibrillose scales or patches from a ruptured
sheath which at first extends to the annular zone or scales mostly whitish,
apex silky and pale greenish yellow to pallid.
Spores (5.5)6-7.5 (8.5) x 3.5-4.5 /u, smooth, apical pore minute,
ochraceous rusty-brown to ochraceous-tawny in KOH, paler ochraceous
in Melzer's reagent; wall about 0.25-0.3 pt thick, shape in face view ovate
to elliptic with some obscurely wedge-shaped, in profile obscurely inequilateral to somewhat bean-shaped.
Basidia (19) 23-27 x 5-7 pt, 4-spored, clavate, hyaline to yellowish in
KOH, yellowish in Melzer's reagent. Pleurocystidia 50-90 X (6) 9-18 pu,
fusoid-ventricose with obtuse apex, with a slender basal stalk in many
extending from below the subhymenium, thick- to thin-walled (on the
same pileus) but some thick-walled individuals seen in every mount,
wall 1-1.5 or up to 2 t thick in neck but thin at apex, smooth. hyaline
to yellow in KOH (pigment mostly in content and fading). Cheilocystidia
36-55 x 8-12 /u, subfusoid to nearly clavate or more or less fusoid-ventricose, yellow to hyaline in KOH, mostly thin-walled, smooth in KOH.
Caulocystidia versiform, 1) clavate to vesiculose, 15-40 X 12-30 /J, walls
smooth, thin to slightly thickened and yellowish to hyaline in KOH; 2)
subfusiform, 40-60 x 9-14 p with slightly thickened (0.5 gp) walls, content homogeneous, occurring both types together in a cluster.
Gill trama a floccose cetnral strand of non-gelatinous thin-walled
subparallel hyphae that are smooth and ochraceous to hyaline in KOH,
inamyloid. Pileus cutis a gelatinous layer of widely separated narrow
hyphae (~ 2.5 p1) diam., smooth, and thin-walled; hypodermium of
ochraceous slightly roughened floccose hyphae 4-8,t diam. Context
hyphae greatly inflated, smooth, walls thin, inamyloid. Clamp connections present..HABIT, HABITAT, AND DISTRIBUTION: Single to scattered on fallen
conifer branches and debris, July to November in Washington, Oregon,
California, Idaho, and Colorado; in Canada known from British Columbia.
OBSERVATIONS: As Kauffman (1926) points out, the measurements
of cystidia given by Murrill (1912) are incorrect. Kauffman also adds
that the taste is slowly bitter and somewhat nauseous. In an Oregon col