How to tell Slender pholiota 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.

Cap 2–8 cm across, nearly round when young, then bell-shaped, later convex to flat, sometimes with a low bump. Ocher brown to reddish brown, darker and tawny in the center, with a yellow-green margin. Surface slimy or tacky, smooth with flattened fibers; young caps have a margin fringed with yellow veil remnants.

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.

Gills attached or slightly running down the stem, close, sulfur yellow or pale greenish yellow when young, cinnamon brown with age, often keeping a greenish tinge. Spore print 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.

Stem 3–8 cm tall and 0.4–1 cm thick, cylindrical, often curved, hollow when mature. Yellow above with a powdery greenish-yellow apex, browning from the base upward. Surface fibrous, with yellow fibers from a thin veil; no distinct ring.

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

Flesh yellow, soft, sometimes watery bright greenish yellow.

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.

Odor and taste mild and indistinct; one description compares the smell to freshly husked green corn.