Small to medium agaric, growing on the ground with clay-brown or dark brown spore print. Pileus yellow or brown, dry or rarely viscid. Lamellae adnexed, adnate, sinuate or subdecurrent, rarely free. Stipe central. Partial veil remnants absent or rarely a ring zone. Volva rarely present. Spores yellow-brown, smooth, nodulose (rarely appearing spinose); germ pore absent. Cheilocystidia present, thick-walled (metuloid). Lamellar trama regular. Pileipellis a cutis or a trichoderm. Clamp connections present.

The spore shape is unique among brown-spored agarics, and the presence of metuloids (thick-walled cystidia with crystal capping) is another distinctive microscopic feature. In Entoloma, spores rarely have numerous angles and then appear nodulose, but the spore print is pinkish brown and thick-walled cystidia are lacking. On macroscopic appearance, nodulose-spored Inocybe are indistinguishable from the non-nodulose species. See under Inocybe (rounded spores) for differentiation against other brown-spored agarics.

Ten indigenous species, but more expected: Inocybe dewrangia, I. calopedes (= I. discissa), I. emergens, I. exigua, I. fulvilubrica, I. imbricata, I. redolens, I. scissa, I. serrata and I. torresiae, as well as the exotic species, I. curvipes.

Species of Inocybe with non-nodulose spores are keyed out separately.

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

In native forests, and under exotic trees in gardens and plantations.

On the ground.

Ectomycorrhizal.

Bougher, N.L. & Matheny, P.B. (2011), Two species of Inocybe (fungi) introduced into Western Australia, Nuytsia 21: 139–148.[Illustration, Description and Microcharacters of I. curvipes]

Bougher, N.L., Matheny, P.B. & Gates, G.M. (2012), Five new species and records of Inocybe (Agaricales) from temperate and tropical Australia, Nuytsia 22: 57–74. [Illustration, Description and Microcharacters of I. emergens, I. fulvilubrica, I. redolens and I. torresiae]

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 I. dewrangia, I. calopedes (as I. discissa), I. exigua and I. imbricata and Key to South Australian species ]

Horak, E. (1977b), Fungi agaricini Novaezelandiae VI. Inocybe (Fr.) Fr. and Astrosporina Schroeter, New Zealand J. Bot. 15: 713–747. [Description, Illustration and Microcharacters of I. scissa (as Astrosporina) and Key to all New Zealand species of Inocybe, some under Astrosporina]

Horak, E. (1979a), Astrosporina (Agaricales) in Indomalaya and Australasia, Persoonia 10: 157–205. [Description and Microcharacters of I. calopedes (as I. discissa), I. exigua and I. imbricata (all as Astrosporina) and Key (as Astrosporina)]

Matheny, P.B. & Bougher, N.L. (2010), Type studies of Australian species of Inocybe (Agaricales), Muelleria 28: 87–104. [Description and Microcharacters for I. calopedes, I. dewrangia, I. emergens, I. exigua and I. imbricata, with a Key to accepted Australian members of Inocybe and a Description and Microcharacters of an Australian collection of I. curvipes]

May, T. (1989), Report of F.N.C.V. fungal excursions: 1986–1988, Vict. Naturalist 106: 48–58. [Description, B&W Illustration and Microcharacters of I. scissa (as Astrosporina)]