Asterophora     Genus

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

None of the special features distinguishing the other white-spored genera:
Gills not free, as in the Lepiotas and Amanitas
Basidia not extra-long, as in the Hygrophoraceae
Spores smooth, except for Lentinellus

Cap less than an inch across
Growing on other fungi, usually on their blackened and squishy remains

Asterophora     Genus     Ditmar: S. F. Gray

Diagnosis

• Shaped like a normal mushroom, though perhaps with very poorly developed gills and stalk
  
• Cap gradually disintegrating into a powdery mass of chlamydospores

Microscropic Characters

• Basidiospores inamyloid

Narrow down your identification:

Resembling a puffball when young: gills usually contorted, thick
Entire fruiting body originally white or whitish
Cap becoming misshapen and covered with brown powder as its cells grow thick-walled and detach themselves from each other, becoming chlamydospores

Quite rare
Gills and stem well-developed, entire fruiting body white, silky
It is the gills here that disintegrate into chlamydospores, from the margin on up
Cap remains smooth, although it may darken to brownish-grey in age

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