Large Shaggy Scaly Inky     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)

Spore print black, very dark brown, purplish black, or dark purplish brown, but not fitting the Gomphidiaceae
Gills usually light grey, becoming black from spores only when very mature

All deliquescing fungi go here
All striate or pleated-capped non-Gomphidius black-spored mushrooms go here (but not randomly wrinkled ones: they go in Psathyrella)
When young, the cap usually cylindrical, and in any case much taller than it is wide and hugging the stem tightly; the gills at this stage are white, and packed very close together
Cap usually deliquescing and surviving in age as uplifted tatters or split fragments
Cap often covered with powder or tiny hairs, especially when young

Diagnosis

• Cap up to 6" high; white, silvery, or some light greyish brown color; covered with fibrillose shags or scabby-looking white to brownish patches of universal veil material

Narrow down your identification:

Cap up to 4" high; silvery grey; covered with scabby-looking white to brownish patches of universal veil material

Cap up to 6" high; white at first, with conspicuous fibrillose tufts; turning pinkish in a zone in between the blackening/deliquescing margin and the pristine white cap tissue
Annulus present
Stalk hollow, with a tough thread that runs the length of the interior

Cap up to 4" high; pale tan to grey, covered with scabby-looking white to brownish patches of universal veil material
With thin brown rhizomorphs

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