Medium to large agaric, growing on the ground, with a white or cream to yellow spore print. Pileus white, pale, brown, grey or black, not or rarely viscid. Lamellae adnate, sinuate or notched, rarely subdecurrent. Stipe central, rarely excentric. Partial veil remnants absent. Spores hyaline, amyloid, warty; germ pore absent. Cheilocystidia present. Lamellar trama regular. Pileipellis a cutis or a trichoderm. Clamp connections absent.

In the field, among larger white to cream-spored agarics, Melanoleuca can resemble Leucopaxillus or Tricholoma, but the combination of the absence of clamp connections and warty, amyloid spores is very distinctive microscopically, as are the cheilocystidia that are typically fusiform or lageniform and capped with crystals. Rhodocollybia is similar in stature and shares the smooth pileus, but it usually has a pink spore print, and the spores are dextrinoid.

Melanoleuca Pat., Cat. Pl. Cell. Tunisie 22 (1897).

Six species: Melanoleuca abutyracea, M. deusta, M. clelandii, M. fusca, M. melaleuca and M. melaniceps. All definitely belong in the genus, but further work is required on the differentiation between them.

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

In native forests and pine plantations.

On the ground.

Saprotrophic.

Bougher, N.L. (2009a), Fungi of the Perth region and beyond: a self-managed field book, Western Australian Naturalists' Club (Inc.), Perth. [Description and Illustration of M. fusca]

Fuhrer, B. (2005), A Field Guide to Australian Fungi. Bloomings Books, Hawthorn. [Description and Illustration of M. melanoleuca and an unnamed species]

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 M. abutyracea, M. clelandii, M. deusta and M. fusca, and Key to South Australian species]

Griffiths, K. (1985), A Field Guide to the Larger Fungi of the Darling Scarp and South West of Western Australia. Published by the author. [Illustration of M. melaleuca]