Micromphale     Genus

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)

Micromphale     Genus     Nees von Esenbeck: S. F. Gray

Diagnosis

• Fruiting body arising from black rhizomorphs
  
• Usually revenant
  
• Odor foul
  
• Stalk hairy or scurfy

Narrow down your identification:

Cap up to 1 1/4" across; brown to reddish brown; hemispherical and radially flat with inrolled margin at first, becoming omphaloid and sulcate
Entire fruiting body yellowish white at first; cap lightening to white
Stalk hollow, wiry, darkening to very dark brown from the base up; base with sparse, wiry, dark brown rhizomorphs
Gills distant (they're too close in the picture), originally attached to a collar rather than the stalk itself; the collar, however, soon collapses onto the stalk
Cestipose on deciduous wood

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