How to tell Velvet shank 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 2-8 cm, hemispherical at first, then convex and finally flat. It's yellow-orange or honey-yellow, darker in the center and paler toward the edge. In wet weather it's slimy and shiny; in dry weather, somewhat matte. The cap skin peels off easily.

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 crowded and thin, attached to the stem or running slightly down it, whitish to cream and yellowing with age. The spore print is white, an important feature for telling it apart from the poisonous funeral bell (whose spore print is rusty 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 3-7 cm tall and 0.3-0.8 cm thick: slender, cylindrical, often curved and hollow. Its telltale feature is a velvety dark brown surface, especially lower down (the upper part is paler, yellowish). There's no ring, but that alone proves nothing: the funeral bell's ring is fragile and often disappears. Its stem, though, is brown with pale lengthwise fibers, not velvety.

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

The flesh is thin and yellowish in the cap, fibrous and springy in the stem. It doesn't change color when cut. It has a pleasant mild flavor.

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.

A faint, pleasant mushroomy smell. The taste is mild and delicate.