Flammulina velutipes (Velvet shank)

The fruit body is a mushroom, that is it consists of a cap with gills on the underside. That cap is produced atop a central stem and is yellow-brown to reddish brown to orangeish, smooth and may grow to several centimetres in diameter. Often it has a sticky, somewhat glue-like coating,  but in dry conditions that ‘glue’ dries and loses its stickiness but leaves the cap somewhat glossy. The cap is gently rounded but may become flat or somewhat irregular with age.

The gills are pale yellowish to creamy.

The stem is tough, to several centimetres long, brown and with a a velvety feel – when fully mature (see http://www.cpbr.gov.au/fungi/images-captions/flammulina-velutipes-0146.html). However, that colour and velvetiness take time to develop. The ‘velutipes’ part of the name means ‘velvet foot’.

There is neither a partial nor a universal veil.

Spore print: white.

The fruit bodies appear on various types of dead wood and usually appear in clusters, from perhaps only a dozen or so up to many tens. Rarely do you see just one or two fruit bodies.

Look-alikes

Certainly, if the brown,  velvety foot has had time to develop, there would be no problem in recognizing Flammulina velutipes.

There a several genera in the ACT that produce clustered mushrooms on wood. However, most can be immediately distinguished from Flammulina velutipes because they have a partial veil (usually with a ring-like remnant left around the upper part of the stem) or because they have a brown to blackish-brown spore print. One exception is the genus Mycena – with a white spore print and no partial veil. However, most species of Mycena have fairly thin caps with striate margins (not so in Flammulina velutipes) and most have with different colours. Mycena leaiana var. australis is an orange Mycena, with a sticky cap (but with a striate margin!) and orange gills. There should be no mistaking it for Flammulina velutipes.