Cap: 0.5-3 cm broad. Obtusely conic, becoming conic-campanulate with age. Margin translucent-striate and generally not incurved in young specimens. Chestnut brown when moist, then dark dingy yellow to pale yellow in drying (hygrophanous), often with a pallid band along the margin, and frequently tinged olive green in patches. Surface smooth, viscid when moist from a separable gelatinous pellicle. Flesh thin, pliant, and more or less concolorous with the cap.
Gills: Attachment adnate to adnexed, finally seceding, close narrow to moderately broad. Colour dull cinnamon brown, darkening with spores in age.
Stem: 60-80 mm long by 1-2.5 mm thick. Equal above, and slightly enlarged at the base. Surface is covered with appressed grayish fibrils, and powdered at the apex. Whitish to pallid to grayish, more brownish toward the base, blue green where bruised or with age. Flesh stuffed with a tough pith. Partial veil thin to obscure to absent.
Microscopic features: Spores purplish brown in deposit, subellipsoid to subovoid, 9-13 by 5-7 microns. Basidia 4-spored. Pleurocystidia absent. Cheilocystidia 17-36 by 4-7.5 microns, fusiform to lance-shaped, with an elongated neck 1.5-2 microns thick.
Habit, habitat and distribution: Scattered to gregarious to cespitose on well-decayed conifer substratum, in mulch, or in soil rich in lignin. Often seen along paths in conifer forests and along abandoned logging roads that are actively being recaptured by alders and firs. Found in mid-to-late fall to early winter throughout the Pacific Northwest and Northern California. Also known from mixed shore pine/spruce forested dune habitats, in conifer needles, from Oregon Dunes (the type locality for this species) south to Samoa Dunes (Humboldt Co, California).
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