How to tell Fairy inkcap from Funeral bell

Young caps are egg-shaped, up to 8 mm, then bell-shaped, 0.5 to 1.5 cm across, occasionally 2 cm, opening only a little. They start cream with an ochre centre, later grey or greyish brown, the centre staying ochre.

The surface is pleated from the margin almost to the centre, and young caps are finely hairy and granular under a hand lens. The cap is very fragile.

The cap is small, 1.5 to 5 cm across and rarely up to 7 cm. It starts convex with an inrolled margin, then opens out almost flat, sometimes with a small bump in the middle.

The colour is honey yellow, ochre or tawny brown. The surface is smooth and slightly sticky in wet weather, and the margin is translucent, so you can see the lines of the gills through it. The cap is hygrophanous: it turns noticeably paler as it dries and is often two-toned. Sheathed woodtuft changes in exactly the same way, so cap colour won't separate them.

The gills are attached and fairly widely spaced for an inkcap, white at first, then grey and blackish. They don't dissolve into ink, though they can soften in rain.

The spore print is black to blackish brown.

The gills are attached to the stem or run slightly down it, and they are crowded and narrow. Pale ochre or yellowish at first, they turn rusty brown as the spores ripen.

The spore print is rusty brown. That rules out honey fungus and velvet shank (white prints) and sulphur tuft and conifer tuft (purple-brown to almost black). It won't rule out sheathed woodtuft, though, whose print is the same colour. The spores are warty, roughly 8–10 × 5–6 µm, clearly larger and rougher than the smooth spores of woodtuft, but that only shows under a microscope.

The stem is 1.5 to 4 cm tall, occasionally 5 to 6 cm, and 1 to 2 mm thick, white, translucent, hollow, very fragile, often curved, and finely downy when young. There's no ring or volva.

The stem is slender, 2 to 7 cm long and 3 to 8 mm thick, even, and hollow with age. It is pale at the top and darkens to brown or reddish brown towards the base. Below the ring it is covered in pale silvery fibres running lengthwise, without the shaggy scales of sheathed woodtuft. White felty mycelium is visible at the base.

The ring is thin, membranous, whitish to yellowish, and soon turns brown from the spores. It's fragile: often all that's left is a brown band on the stem, and old specimens can lose it entirely. So a missing ring doesn't mean it isn't a funeral bell. There is no volva at the base.

The flesh is very thin, almost membranous, and fragile.

The flesh is thin, yellowish to watery brown and darker in the stem. It doesn't change colour when cut.

The smell and taste aren't distinctive.

The smell is often mealy, like fresh flour, especially when the mushroom is crushed. It can also be very faint, so field guides don't treat smell as a reliable feature, and it won't tell a funeral bell from a woodtuft.