Description

1. Hyphae of the pileipellis, 2. Cheilocystidia, 3. Spores, 4. Hyphae of the cortical layer of the stem with terminal cell.

Cap 10-45 mm across, conical, convex to plano-convex, mostly without an umbo, glabrous, sulcate, translucent-striate, hygrophanous, pale grey to dark grey or greyish brown or dark brown with paler margin, sometimes with a reddish shadow in the centre, with age developing reddish brown spots and finally often becoming entirely dark red-brown with paler margin. Gills 20-23 reaching the stem, elastic-tough, adnexed to broadly adnate, with or without a decurrent tooth, dorsally intervenose, pale grey to grey with white edge, with age developing red-brown spots. Stem 40-80 x 1-5 mm, tough, cylindrical or sometimes flattened and fissured lengthwise, glabrous, often rooting, the base densely covered with wolly white fibrils; at first with whitish apex, becoming darker to brown to red-brown farther below, with age becoming red-brown. Odour indistinctive. Taste indistinctive, not farinaceous. Basidia 25-40 x 6-9 um, slender-clavate, 4-spored, with sterigmata 4-8 um long. Spores 7.5-10 x (4.5-)5-6 um, Q = 1.5-2, Qav ˜ 1.6, pip-shaped to ellipsoid, amyloid. Cheilocystidia (10.5-)18-40 x 4.5-10(-13.5) um, forming a discontinuous sterile band, clavate to somewhat irregularly shaped, covered with fairly few unevenly spaced, coarse, simple to much branched, straight to curved or flexuous, cylindrical excrescences up to 20 um long. Pleurocystidia absent. Lamellar trama dextrinoid. Hyphae of the pileipellis 1.5-4.5 um wide somewhat gelatinized, mostly smooth or covered with scattered warts or cylindric excrescences 1-10 x 1-1.5 um, terminated by mostly diverticulate cells. Hyphae of the cortical layer of the stem 1.8-3 um wide, smooth to sparsely diverticulate with excrescences 1-4.5-0.5-1.5 um, terminal cells up to 5.5 um wide and somewhat more densely diverticulate. Clamps present in all tissues.

Ecology and distribution

Cespitose or fasciculate on decaying wood of both conifer and deciduous trees. Autumn. Widespread but uncommon in Norway.

Look-alikes