Vaginatae     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)

Fruiting body having a combination of some of the following characteristics:
Stalk growing out of a cup of cottony tissue called a volva (all white-spored mushrooms with a volva go here)
Cap with scattered patches or flakes of the same sort of tissue as the volva (see second picture), easily peeled off
Annulus (skirt-like ring on stalk)

Diagnosis

• Cap margin distinctly striate in maturity
  
• Either (most commonly) annulus absent and colors brown or grey, or
  
• (rarely) annulus present and colors bright: red, orange or yellow
  
• Volva sack-like in some species, in others clamped tightly to the stem, leaving traces in bands of color on the stalk

• Spores inamyloid

Narrow down your identification:

• Fruiting body with yellow, red, or orange coloration
  
• Annulus present
  
• Volva present
  
• Universal veil generally forming one big patch of material on the cap

• Cap usually some shade of brown or gray, occasionally white
  
• Annulus absent, but there may be strangulated zones on the stem
  
• Universal veil material generally not present (or only occasionally) on the cap
  
• Volva sac-like, or clamped tightly to the stem

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