Other Colored Hygrocybe     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 "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

Gills (at least) with a distinct waxy or silky feel, due to unusually long basidia
No annulus, armilla or volva
Cap often slimy
They tend to grow in cold areas, and sometimes fruit at times when it's too cold for other mushrooms
Several have an insulating slimy universal veil. This veil leaves the cap and the stalk slimy, except for the upper stalk where the gills covered it when the mushroom was a button.

Cap up to 2" across, usually less than 1" across; almost always slimy; often brightly colored
Often in moss
Stem often fragile and hollow

Diagnosis

• Fruiting body with no orange, red, or yellow coloration (pink, whitish and buff ones go here)

Narrow down your identification:

Cap up to 1 1/2" across; conical at first, becoming convex; color variable: shell pink, peach, orange, olive orange, violet grey, vinaceous, yellow or cream
Gills often decurrent
Stem slimy
In sphagnum bogs or in woods among mosses

Cap up to 1 1/2" across; broadly conical at first, then umbonate and eventually almost flat; tacky; orange brown to olive brown
Gills dark yellowish orange, retaining their color even after the cap has faded
Stem yellow or pale yellowish orange
Found all over the place: on the ground in forests, at the edge of sphagnum bogs, and on very rotten wood

Cap up to 2 3/4" across; not slimy or sticky at all; bluntly conical; greyish brown, often with lighter streaks
Stalk concolorous, shading to white at the base
Odor strong, pungent, "nitrous"
Taste acidic

Cap up to 2 3/8" across
Entire fruiting body dark olive brown to greyish brown, staining reddish when cut or bruised
Gills usually emarginate
Odor, taste sometimes "nitrogenous" or of ammonia

Cap up to 1 1/4" across; translucent-striate at first, becoming opaque in age; deep "parrot" green at first, fading to a variety of other colors: pink, buff, or yellowish
Stem slimy; usually concolorous with cap
Gills colored like cap, but lighter

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