Cap: 2-4 (5) cm broad. Conic to conic convex, eventually expanding to broadly convex. Plain in age with wavy margin. Chestnut to caramel with age. Hygrophanous, changing color in age and drying. Yellowish-brown or ochraceous in drying. Viscid when moist. Bruising bluish.

Gills: Adnate to subdecurrent. Broad. Cinnamon brown to deep smoky brown. Edges paler.

Stem: 20-80 mm long x 2.3-5.5 mm thick. Curved and enlarged at base. White with fine fibrils. Often staining blue when damaged. Hollow.

Spores: 9-12 x 5.8m.

Sporeprint: Dark purple brown.

Habitat: Scattered to gregarious in humus enriched in woody debris among leaves and twigs, alder wood chips and alder bark mulch. Often glowing solitary to clusters and clumps in heavily mulched areas with rhododendrons or rose bushes, ivy and strawberry plants.

Distribution: San Francisco, California to British Columbia, Canada. Rare in the wild but abundant in man made environments throughout the Pacific Northwest. Sometimes more than 20 to 50 pounds may appear in a single location.

Season: September through December.

Dosage: 1 large specimen or from 2 to 3 small specimens. 1/2 gram dried. Single locations appear to fruit for three years and then disappear.

Comment: I once found 18 specimens in the wild along side a logging road by a clear cut in Kingston, Washington (see wood-chip variety). Was once common for three years in every bed box of the Freeway Park in downtown Seattle until the nutrients in the mulched beds were used up and different mulches replaced the original 'Steer-Co" alder chips and bark once common in the Puget Sound.