How to tell Conifer tuft from Funeral bell

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 cap is 3-7 cm across, hemispherical with an inrolled margin when young, later convex with a low umbo. It's ocher yellow to yellowish brown, darkening to orange-brown toward the center, with a paler margin. The surface is smooth and slightly sticky in wet weather. The cap skin doesn't peel.

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 gills are attached to the stem and moderately crowded. Young gills are grayish white; as the spores ripen they turn gray-lilac, ash gray or purplish gray. They never turn sulfur yellow or greenish, and that's what fundamentally sets this species apart from the poisonous sulphur tuft. The spore print is dark purple-brown to blackish brown.

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 stem is 4-8 cm tall and 0.5-1 cm thick, cylindrical, often curved. It's ocher yellow at the top, darkening with age to rusty brown toward the base, with fine lengthwise fibers. The ring is faint or absent; young mushrooms may have a thin fibrous ring zone. Several stems are often fused at the base into a cluster.

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

The flesh is meaty and yellowish in the cap, more fibrous in the stem, and doesn't change color when cut. The smell and taste are pleasantly mushroomy, without bitterness. That's another diagnostic feature against the sulphur tuft, whose flesh is bitter.

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.

Pleasantly mushroomy, with no distinctive notes and no bitterness.