Small agaric, growing on the ground, litter or mulch, wood or bryophytes, with a rusty to ochre-brown spore print. Pileus brown, not viscid. Lamellae adnate or subdecurrent. Stipe central. Partial veil remnants a ring zone or absent. Spores yellow-brown, warty; plage present; germ pore absent or narrow. Cheilocystidia and pleurocystidia present, metuloid. Lamellar trama regular or interwoven. Pileipellis a cutis. Clamp connections present.

Macroscopically indistinguishable from other Galerina species, and sharing the typical warty spores with a distinct plage, G. nana is very distinctive due to the presence of thick-walled cystidia with crystal-encrusted apices (metuloids). Such metuloids occur among brown-spored genera with a central stipe also in Inocybe, which has smooth (rounded or nodulose) spores without a plage.

One species: Galerina nana. This is keyed out separately because it is the Galerina with metuloid cystidia. It is the sole Australian representative of Galerina section Inocyboides.

Galerina nana (Petri) Kühner, Galera 219 (1935).

S.A., N.S.W., Vic. and Tas. (and probably also W.A. and Qld).

In native forests and grassland, sometimes after fire, or in potted plants.

On the ground, litter, mulch, wood or among bryophytes.

Saprotrophic.

Grgurinovic, C.A. (1997a), Larger Fungi of South Australia. The Botanic Gardens of Adelaide and State Herbarium and The Flora and Fauna of South Australia Handbooks Committee, Adelaide. [Description and Microcharacters of G. nana]

Grgurinovic, C.A. & May, T.W. (1988), First record of Galerina nana (Cortinariales) from Australia, Mycotaxon 31: 79–84. [Description and Microcharacters of G. nana]

Wood, A.E. (2001), Studies in the genus Galerina (Agaricales) in Australia, Austral. Syst. Bot. 14: 615–676 [Description, B&W Illustration and Microcharacters of G. nana]