Smaller Yellow-footed Chroogomphus     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 smoky-olive to black
Gills very decurrent, becoming smoky in age from developing spores
Cap typically slimy, or at least viscid
Under conifers only

Flesh (and gills, before they become colored by developing spores) colored: pinkish, yellow or orange
More likely to be umbonate

Diagnosis

• Cap up to 1 1/2" across; some shade of pale or bright yellow, pink or ochre when young; not darkening as much as the Larger Dull-footed Chroogomphus or not darkening at all
  
• Stalk bright yellow or bright ochre

Narrow down your identification:

Cap moist but not sticky when young; pinkish to vinaceous orange
Stalk bright yellow and fibrillose on the bottom two-thirds
Growing in bogs

Cap and entire stem bright yellowish orange to bright ochre
Gills often reddening near the stalk in maturity, and stalk reddening near the ground

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