Dull Hygrophorus     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 usually larger than 2" across; often viscid or slimy; usually white or dull colored
Stature usually robust
Stalk fleshy; only rarely hollow

Diagnosis

• Cap some shade of grey, brown, greyish brown, or brownish grey

Narrow down your identification:

Cap up to 4" across; grey; slimy
Odor strong, almondy
Gills sometimes subdecurrent
Under conifers, especially spruce and pine. And douglas fir, too, but around here that would have to be transplanted

Cap up to 6" across; virgate; brown with yellow, olive or cinnamon shades on disk, shading to white margin; slimy when moist
Odor strong, almondy
Gills sometimes subdecurrent
Under conifers

Cap up to 5" across; virgate; blackish brown to tan; tacky when moist
Odor faint, of coal tar
Gills subdecurrent
Stem colored like cap, but lighter (sometimes just white)
Under conifers

Cap up to 3" across; slimy; dark blackish brown
Gills and stalk yellowish
Stalk slimy except at the top

Cap up to 5" across; slimy; virgate, sometimes to the point of appearing striate; broadly convex to umbonate, becoming flat; greyish brown or olive brown, becoming very dark brown at the disk
Universal veil slimy, leaving a layer of slime on the cap and all but the top of the stem
Partial veil fibrous, leaving streaks of dark brown fibrils on the cap and jagged bands of dark brown fibrils on the stalk

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