Solitary to fasciculate on old stumps and trunks, on fallen branches and on decaying wood, mostly from hardwood trees (e.g. Fagus, Quercus, Betula, and Alnus) but also on conifers. Late spring to late autumn. Very common and widely distributed. Also recorded in North Norway.

Pileus 20-65 mm across, broadly conical, parabolical to convex, eventually flattening to plane with age, mostly with a prominent umbo, sulcate to conspicuously rugose, translucent-striate, glabrous, in young stages often pale to fairly dark date brown, becoming beige to grey-brown, usually sepia brown at the centre, and often whitish at the margin. Lamellae 25-32 reaching the stipe, ascending, sometimes anastomosing or furcate and sometimes dorsally intervenose with age, elastic-tough, adnate to emarginate, sometimes decurrent with a short tooth, white, not infrequently turning pale incarnate to pink. Stipe 45-110(-180) x 1.5-6 mm, hollow, cartilaginous, elastic-tough, equal or somewhat broadened below, terete or compressed, straight to curved, glabrous, very dark sepia brown in young specimens, becoming grey-brown, the apex often pale grey to whitish, darker grey brown below, the base usually covered with coarse, whitish fibrils, rooting into the substratum. Odour indistinctive or somewhat disagreeable or somewhat farinaceous. Taste farinaceous.

Basidia 33-55 x 8-10 µm, clavate, 2-spored or 4-spored, with sterigmata up to 10 µm long. Spores 10-12 x 7-9 µm (2-spored basidia) or 9-12 x 6-7 µm (4-spored basidia), Q 1.2-1.9, Qav~1.7, broadly pip-shaped, smooth, amyloid. Cheilocystidia 17-50 x 7-18 µm, forming a sterile band, clavate to more or less irregularly shaped, often with new heads apically, covered with few to fairly numerous, unevenly spaced, cylindrical, simple to branched, more or less curved excrescences 2-25 x 1-2 µm. Pleurocystidia absent. Lamellar trama dextrinoid. Hyphae of the pileipellis 2-2.5 µm wide, sparsely to densely diverticulate, with excrescences up to 10 µm long, simple to very branched, forming dense masses. Hyphae of the cortical layer of the stipe 2-3 µm wide, sparsely covered with cylindrical excrescences 2-5 x 1 µm. Clamp connections presentat all tissues in 4-spored form, absent i 2-spored form.

Microphotos of cheilocystidia and spores 1

Microphotos of cheilocystidia 2

Microphotos of cheilocystidia 3

Mycena galericulata belongs to Mycena sect. Mycena. It is a very variable species but is usually possible to identify in the field on account of the large size, the grey-brown, rugose pileus, the elastic-tough stipe and the farinaceous taste. M. maculata is often spotted with reddish brown markings; it lacks the farinaceous taste, the spores are smaller, and the hyphae of the pileipellis are smooth to sparsely diverticulate. The North American species M. hemisphaericaPeck is supposed to have almost completely smooth hyphae of the pileipellis, but at present there is some doubt about its separation from M. galericulata(see Maas Geesteranus 1985: 354). M. atrochalybaea Huijsm. is another species with the hyphae of the pileipellis mostly smooth, and with the hyphae of the stipitepellis smooth as well. M. romagnesiana lacks a translucent striation of the pileus; it has a smell of apple when cut, then sweetish fruity, and the taste is indistinctive, not farinaceous, and the hyphae of the pileipellis are smooth or only covered with low warts (Maas Geesteranus 1991b).

The differences can be tabulated as follows, and one will see that the differences are very small. These species are in great need of further studies: