Pileus 5-12 cm. across, disc fleshy, remainder thin, convex then expanded, often becoming more or less depressed at the centre, often sooty or covered with olive down when young, soon paler; usually ochraceous with a tinge of honey-colour, sprinkled all over with small spreading blackish-brown scales, margin striate; gills adnate, then becoming more or less decurrent, rather distant, white with a pink tinge, then brownish and powdered with the white .spores; stem 6-12 cm. long, 1-1.5 cm. thick, rigid, more or less grooved, dingy-ochraceous, floccose or almost naked below the ring, base often covered with yellowish down, stuffed, then hollow, elastic, ring near the apex; spores elliptical, 9 x 5-6 µ.

Maungaroa, New Zealand. Europe, North America, South America, Australia, India.

At the base of trunks or on the ground, springing from buried wood.

Usually densely tufted, although sometimes solitary, and then usually larger; very variable; stem and pileus often quite glabrous, especially when old. A very destructive parasite to timber trees in Europe, the black cord-like strands of mycelium running between the wood and the bark, also travelling in the ground from one tree to another. These strands of mycelium were at one time considered as constituting a distinct genus of Fungi called Rhizomorpha.