Stem: thread-like, black or very dark brown, horny and usually springing from a black horse-hair-like mycelium.
Gills: whitish or dirty flesh-colour, adnate and crowded.
Flesh: white in the pileus and black in the stem.
Spore-print: white.
Spores: medium-sized, pip-shaped, not blueing in solutions containing iodine and measuring 7-9 × 3-4 µm in size.
Marginal cystidia: oval or ellipsoid, covered on the upper half with small pimple-like projections.
Facial cystidia: absent.
General Information: This fungus is common in troops from late summer until winter on dead and dying heather. It is also found in woods on leaves and twigs, particularly in plantations on conifer needles. It is easily recognised by the dark horse-hair-like stem which becomes bent and twisted on drying and the small, pinkish flesh-coloured cap. The word androsaceus means, and refers to, the stem which resembles the tough and wiry fronds of some of the red algae, such as Ahnfeldtia which is found around our sea-shores.
Illustrations: LH 115; NB 471; WD 244.