Dark Pluteus     Section

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)

Spores pink or reddish

Gills free
Often growing on wood

Lacking a volva
Growing on wood or woody debris
Typically bluntly conical or campanulate when young, becoming umbonate (often a flat cap with a very small umbo) in age
Often somewhat scaly or fibrillose on the disk

Diagnosis

• Cap brown, dark brown or blackish

Narrow down your identification:

Cap up to 4" across; dark brown to black; virgate
Gills white with dark brown to black edges
Stalk white or brownish, coated with darker fibrils
On coniferous wood

Cap up to 5" across; dark brown and often wrinkled and tacky when young, lightening in age, often slightly virgate

Cap up to 3" across; minutely scurfy; dark brown, olive brown, or yellow mixed with black when young, becoming more and more fulvous with age until entirely so
Stem pinkish when young, becoming yellower with age
On deciduous wood

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