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Conocybe velutipes

by Michael Kuo, February 2019

Conocybe velutipes isn't the most distinct mushroom you're going to find. It's small, more or less brown, and looks like a whole host of other LBMs ("little brown mushrooms"). The conic cap, fragile stature, and cinnamon brown mature gills are pretty good field characters to place it in the genus Conocybe, but after that microscopic examination is probably required for identification: look for fairly large spores (see measurements below), 4-spored basidia, caulocystidia that are not shaped like bowling pins, and cheilocystidia that are bowling-pin-shaped.

Conocybe siennophylla is virtually identical to the naked eye, but features smaller spores with thinner walls.

Conocybe kuehneriana is a synonym.

Description:

Ecology: Saprobic; growing alone, scattered, or gregariously in leaf litter in woods or in disturbed soil in urban settings; late spring through fall; North American distribution uncertain (previously reported from Massachusetts and California in online records of major herbaria). The illustrated and described collection is from Illinois.

Cap: 1–2 cm; conic when young, becoming broadly conic; dry; finely lined from the margin nearly to the center; bald or finely pubescent; dull brown, fading markedly to yellowish tan, but retaining a darker center.

Gills: Attached to the stem; close; colored like the cap at first, becoming cinnamon.

Stem: 4–6 cm long; 0.5–1.5 mm thick; fragile; more or less equal; brownish; finely pubescent; basal mycelium white.

Flesh: Insubstantial.

Odor: Not distinctive.

Spore Print: Cinnamon brown.

Microscopic Features: Spores 11–13 x 7–8 µm; ellipsoid, with a pore 1–2 µm across; walls 0.5–1 µm thick; smooth; orangish brown in KOH. Basidia 4-sterigmate. Pleurocystidia not found. Cheilocystidia 15–22 x 7–10 µm; lecythiform, with a severely narrowed neck between a clavate to ellipsoid bottom portion and a subglobose head 3–4 µm wide; thin-walled; smooth; hyaline in KOH. Pileipellis hymeniform/cellular. Caulocystidia 15–20 x 5–8 µm; subcylindric or sublageniform; smooth; hyaline in KOH.


REFERENCES:(Velenovský, 1939) Hausknecht & Svrček, 1999. (Watling, 1982; Arnolds, 2005; Hausknecht & Vesterholt, 2018.) Herb. Kuo 05231802.


This site contains no information about the edibility or toxicity of mushrooms.


 

Conocybe velutipes

Conocybe velutipes
Spores

Conocybe velutipes
Cheilocystidia

Conocybe velutipes
Caulocystidia



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Kuo, M. (2019, February). Conocybe velutipes. Retrieved from the MushroomExpert.Com Web site: http://www.mushroomexpert.com/conocybe_velutipes.html