Funeral Bells

Appearance

The cap reaches 1.7 to 4 cm in diameter. It starts convex, sometimes broadly conical, and has edges that are curved in against the gills. As the cap grows and expands, it becomes broadly convex and then flattened, sometimes developing a central elevation, or umbo, which may project prominently from the cap surface.

Based on the collective descriptions of the five taxa now considered to be "G. marginata", the texture of the surface shows significant variation. Smith and Singer give the following descriptions of surface texture: from "viscid", to "shining and viscid to lubricous when moist", to "shining, lubricous to subviscid or merely moist, with a fatty appearance although not distinctly viscid", to "moist but not viscid".

The cap surface remains smooth and changes colors with humidity, pale to dark ochraceous tawny over the disc and yellow-ochraceous on the margin, but fading to dull tan or darker when dry. When moist, the cap is somewhat transparent so that the outlines of the gills may be seen as striations. The flesh is pale brownish ochraceous to nearly white, thin and pliant, with an odor and taste varying from very slightly to strongly like flour.

The gills are typically narrow and crowded together, with a broadly adnate to nearly decurrent attachment to the stem and convex edges. They are a pallid brown when young, becoming tawny at maturity. Some short gills, called lamellulae, do not extend entirely from the cap edge to the stem, and are intercalated among the longer gills. The stem ranges from 3 to 6 cm long, 3 to 9 mm thick at the apex, and stays equal in width throughout or is slightly enlarged downward. Initially solid, it becomes hollow from the bottom up as it matures. The membranous ring is located on the upper half of the stem near the cap, but may be sloughed off and missing in older specimens.

Its color is initially whitish or light brown, but usually appears a darker rusty-brown in mature specimens that have dropped spores on it. Above the level of the ring, the stem surface has a very fine whitish powder and is paler than the cap; below the ring it is brown down to the reddish-brown to bistre base. The lower portion of the stem has a thin coating of pallid fibrils which eventually disappear and do not leave any scales. The spore print is rusty-brown.The spores measure 8–10 by 5–6 µm, and are slightly inequilateral in profile view, and egg-shaped in face view. Like all "Galerina" species, the spores have a plage, which has been described as resembling "a slightly wrinkled plastic shrink-wrap covering over the distal end of the spore".

The spore surface is warty and full of wrinkles, with a smooth depression where the spore was once attached via the sterigmatum to the basidium. When in potassium hydroxide solution, the spores appear tawny or darker rusty-brown, with an apical callus. The basidia are four-spored, roughly cylindrical when producing spores, but with a slightly tapered base, and measure 21–29 by 5–8.4 µm.

Cystidia are cells of the fertile hymenium that do not produce spores. These sterile cells, which are structurally distinct from the basidia, are further classified according to their position. In "G. marginata", the pleurocystidia are 46–60 by 9–12 µm, thin-walled, and hyaline in KOH, fusoid to ventricose in shape with wavy necks and blunt to subacute apices. The cheilocystidia are similar in shape but often smaller than the pleurocystidia, abundant, with no club-shaped or abruptly tapering cells present. Clamp connections are present in the hyphae.

Distribution

"Galerina marginata" is widely distributed throughout the Northern Hemisphere, found in North America, Europe, Japan, Iran, continental Asia, and the Caucasus. In North America, it has been collected as far north as the boreal forest of Canada and subarctic and arctic habitats in Labrador, and south to Jalisco, Mexico. It is also found in Australia.

Habitat

"Galerina marginata" is a saprobic fungus, obtaining nutrients by breaking down organic matter. It is known to have most of the major classes of secreted enzymes that dissolve plant cell wall polysaccharides, and has been used as a model saprobe in recent studies of ectomycorrhizal fungi.

Because of its variety of enzymes capable of breaking down wood and other lignocellulosic materials, the Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute is currently sequencing its genome. The fungus is typically reported to grow on or near the wood of conifers, although it has been observed to grow on hardwoods as well. Fruit bodies may grow solitarily, but more typically in groups or small clusters, and appear in the summer to autumn. Sometimes, they may grow on buried wood and thus appear to be growing on soil.