Laccaria     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

Growing on the ground

Found in woods
Not rooting

Gills attached to decurrent
Coloration usually white to greyish brown, sometimes purple or with purple tones
Never with a ring of any kind

Laccaria     Genus     Berkeley & Broome

Diagnosis

• Fruiting body often with purple colors, especially on the gills
  
• If no purple colors, then cap warm brown and minutely scaly, and gills white
  
• Base of stalk (sometimes entire stalk) coated with fuzzy white or purple mycelium
  
• Stalk often with tough "shavings" or "hangnails" of fibrous tissue projecting from it

• Clamp connections present
  
• Spores spiny, multinucleate

Comments

Narrow down your identification:

Cap up to 2" across
Entire fruiting body deep, intense purple at first; cap and stem fading with age to buff or light grey

Cap up to 2" across; warm brown at first and minutely scaly
Stem up to 3" long; concolorous or pinkish
Gills pale pinkish to pinkish brown, colored white by spores at maturity

Near the Great Lakes; in moss, especially sphagnum, under conifers
Stem up to 5 3/4" long
Cap up to 2 1/4" across; minutely scaly; orange brown fading to buff, stalk concolorous
Gills pale pinkish

Cap up to 4 1/2" across; very light purple brown, soon fading to grey or buff; often irregular with wavy margin in maturity
Gills deep purple

Cap up to 1 1/2" across, but often less than an inch; strongly striate; reddish brown, soon lightening to orange brown, and then fading to buff; often much more strongly on the disk
Stalk up to 1 1/4" long, concolourous with cap
Gills pinkish buff

In sand dunes or very sandy soil, usually under pines
Cap up to 3" across, usually the only part of the mushroom to emerge from the sand; grayish purple when young, soon becoming red-brown, brown or
buff

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