Pinewood Gingertail

Description

Pinewood Gingertail is a common, tiny to small, gilled mushroom. It occurs in Europe, Asia, and North America. It occurs throughout most of the United States and southern Canada, but it is absent from the Great Plains and the Great Basin.

Pinewood Gingertail is found mostly in the summer and fall in Minnesota but nearly year-round in warmer regions. It usually appears in dense clusters, sometimes in groups or alone. It grows on rotting coniferous stumps and logs. It gains its nutrients from decaying wood (saprobic).

The cap is hemispherical, bell-shaped, or convex at first. The mature cap is ⅛″ to 1″ (3.5 to 25 mm) in diameter and broadly convex with a depression in the center. It is yellowish, yellowish brown, brownish yellow, orangish brown, or orange, with a dark center. The surface is hairless and dry. The margins are broadly lined when wet or moist.

The gills are yellowish to orangish. They are fairly well-spaced and they slightly run down the stalk. There are usually many cross veins connecting adjacent gills. Between the primary gills there are short gills that do not extend to the stalk.

The stalk is tough, wiry, often curved, ⅝″ to 1 3⁄16″ (1.5 to 3.0 cm) long, and 1⁄64″ to 1⁄16″ (0.5 to 2.0 mm) thick. It is colored like the cap or yellowish above, grading to orangish brown below. There are bright, orangish-brown hairs near the base.

The flesh is yellowish. It is edible but insubstantial, and the taste is bitter.

The spore print is white.

Similar Species

Cross-veined Troop Mushroom (Xeromphalina kauffmanii) and Pinewood Gingertail are nearly impossible to tell apart by appearance alone. The former grows only on hardwood logs.

Habitat and Hosts

Mixed and coniferous forests. Coniferous logs.

Ecology

Season

Summer and fall