Colorful Mycena     Subgenus

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 trees or dead wood, leaves, or sticks, or organic debris, often in moss

Shaped like a “normal mushroom”
Small and fragile to medium-sized, except for one large, grey-capped species

Fruiting body small: cap up to 1 1/4" across (and most clearly smaller than that)

Cap bell-shaped, conical, or either of those with an umbo; margin never incurved; usually some shade of grey or brown, but purplish in one unusually large species.
Stem thin; either very fragile or very tough
Some species have a colored juice that can be squeezed out of the end of the stem
No rhizomorphs

Diagnosis

• Cap, stem or gills with some colors (orange, yellow, pinkish or purple, for example) other than brown, grey, black and white

Narrow down your identification:

Cap up to 3/4" across, becoming striate; yellow to dingy yellow; oval (almost hemispherical) becoming umbonate, viscid when moist; if the mushroom dries out, the color fades and the sliminess disappears
Stalk bright yellow, fading to white; fragile, hollow
In moss

Cap up to 2" across; bright reddish orange fading to yellowish orange; sticky when moist
Gills a bit lighter than the cap, but staining concolorous; edged with bright red
Cestipose on deciduous wood

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