Marginal and facial cystidia: absent.
Habitat & Distribution: Common in troops in woods, particularly beech but also found in pine woods and on heaths.
General Information: Easily recognised by the crowded, narrow, cream coloured gills and the cap being entirely white when young, but which rapidly becomes spotted red-brown as it develops. ‘Maculatus’ means spotted and refers to the red-brown blotches which develop irregularly on the cap, stem and gills as the fruit-body matures.
The genus Collybia is characterised by the fruit-body being tough, the cap-margin incurved at first and the spore-print white or whitish. The common fungus C. maculata has always been assumed to have a white spore-print but if a cap is placed on a piece of white paper gills-down and left for twelve hours there is a surprise in store for the careful observer.
Illustrations: F 15a; Hvass 77; LH 101; NB 1034; WD 212.
Plate 24. Fleshy fungi with tough stem: Spores white to cream and borne on gills
![[Larger illustration]](#467779198995390083_illo091lg.png.id-6271886586506473480.wrap-0.html.html){kind=link}
The specialised substrates of certain species of Marasmius and related genera
A whole series of very small fungi are found in woodland communities which appear to be closely related one to another because their caps are usually tough, although membranous, dry rapidly yet do not decay, and, moreover, revive on remoistening. Their gills are also rather tough and their spores always white in mass. They are placed in the genus Marasmius. Collybia or Marasmius peronatus (Fries) Fries the ‘wood woolly foot’ is one of our larger more familiar agarics related to this group, but whereas it grows on all kinds of leafy detritus, even wood, these small fungi appear to be very specific to the substrate on which they grow.