A buff to clay-colored funnel-shaped mushroom that fruits at the edges of melting snowbanks under spruce in high-elevation Rocky Mountain forests. Its stem base is bound into the needle litter by conspicuous white rhizomorphs, the feature for which it is named. It has a slight to unpleasant odor and a bitter taste.
Inedible; toxicity unknown. Many Clitocybe species contain muscarine, so it should not be eaten.
Never eat a wild mushroom based on a web page — confirm with an expert.
Habitat
Scattered, grouped or clustered under spruce, occasionally larch or pine, at the edges of melting snowbanks at about 1,500-3,000 m; mostly June and early July.
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Mountains of the western United States: recorded from Idaho, Washington and Wyoming (Wikipedia), and included in MykoWeb's California Fungi from montane conifer duff after snowmelt. It is locally abundant at some high-elevation Rocky Mountain sites.
Characteristics
Cap: 2-10 cm, convex becoming flat to funnel-shaped, whitish when young, buff when dry, cinnamon-buff to clay when wet. Gills: adnate to decurrent, close, sometimes veined, about cap color or paler. Stem: 2-8 cm long, 0.5-2 cm thick, stuffed with cottony mycelium, hollow with age; base with white rhizomorphs binding needles and debris. Flesh: thin except over the disc. Odor: slight to unpleasant. Taste: bitter. Spore print: white. Microscopic: spores elliptical, smooth, 4.5-6 x 2.5-3.5 µm; cystidia absent.
