Pileus up to 30 x 25 mm when still closed, subglobose, ovoid or ellipsoid, expanding to conical or convex and then up to 50 mm wide, centre golden yellow or ochre, covered with a layer of felty, whitish veil, breaking up into small, white to cream woolly flocks, those becoming yellow- to red-brown at centre of pileus. Lamellae, L = c. 60--70, l = 3--5, free, first white then grey-brown to black, 3--8(--10) mm broad. Stipe 30--80 x 2--7 mm, white, base clavate, sometimes with a volva-like margin and often attached to a rust coloured ozonium.
  Spores 8.5--11.5 x 5.5--7 µm, Q = 1.50--1.90, av. Q = , av. L = µm, av. B = µm, cylindrical-ellipsoid or ellipsoid, in side view a few phaseoliform, with rounded base and apex, medium to dark red-brown; germ pore eccentric, c. 1.3 µm wide. Basidia 18--34 x 8--9 µm, 4-spored, surrounded by 3--6 pseudoparaphyses. Pleurocystidia 50--120 x 30--65 µm, subglobose, ellipsoid, broadly utriform or subcylindric. Cheilocystidia lageniform and 30--60 x 12--20 x 5--10 µm or (sub)globose, ellipsoid, ovoid, broadly utriform and 40--100 x 25--50 µm. Caulocystidia 35--100 x 10--28 x 7--12 µm, lageniform. Veil 20--80 x 5--45 µm, made up of chains of cylindrical to ellipsoid, fusoid or (sub)globose cells, if (sub)globose than towards end of the chain and 25--45 µm in diam., thin-walled to somewhat thick-walled and brownish towards end of chain and from centre of pileus. Pileipellis a epithelioid hymeniderm. Clamp-connections absent, only pseudoclamps found.

Habitat & distribution

  Fasciculate, sometimes solitary around truncs or on logs, branches of deciduous trees. Not common but wide-spread in Europe.

Remarks

  The spores with a length becoming more than 10 µm and the breadth of 5.5--7 µm, and the lageniform cheilocystidia are characters to identufy Coprinus radians.