Agrocybe pediades
Annales des Sciences Naturelles, Series 7, 9: 358. 1889.
Common Name: none
Cap 0.8-3.0 cm broad, convex, expanding to plano-convex; margin at first slightly incurved, then decurved, nearly plane at maturity; surface smooth, sticky when moist, otherwise dry, pale tawny-brown, fading to buff-brown, almost cream in age; flesh thin, whitish to buff, unchanging; odor and taste farinaceous.
Gills adnate to adnexed, moderately broad, close, often continuing as lines on the stipe apex, cream-buff, becoming brown, sometimes tinged rusty-brown.
Stipe 2-4 cm long, 1-2 mm thick, slender, straight to occasionally twisted, pliant, stuffed, equal or narrowed slightly at the base; surface dry, striate at the apex, elsewhere minutely fibrillose, pallid above, concolorous with the cap below; flesh pale-buff, stuffed tissue white; veil fibrillose, evanescent, leaving minute fragments on the immature cap.
Spores 11-14 x 7-8 µm, elliptical, smooth, with an apical pore; spore print dark brown.
Scattered to gregarious in grass and in disturbed areas, e.g. along trails and in gardens; fruiting spring, summer and fall in watered areas, also common after the start of the winter rains.
Edible, but too small and easily confused with other "LBMs" to be recommended.
This common inhabitant of grassy areas is characterized by a smooth (sticky when moist), buff-brown cap, brown spores, slender stipe, and a soon disappearing fibrillose veil. Look-alikes include Marasmius oreades with slightly distant, cream-colored gills and white spores, Stropharia coronilla, with purplish gills, purple-brown spores and a striate-edged annulus, and Panaeolus foenisecii, with a darker-brown cap, mottled dark gills and dark-brown spores. To confirm an identification, a microscope is needed to check the cuticle which is cellular and the spores which have an apical pore.
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