Melanoleuca cognata, also know as Spring Cavalier, is a medium or large agaric, that is pale brown with an umbonate cap and white gills. It occurs often in the spring, when few other gilled mushrooms are fruiting, and grows solitary or scattered on soil in coniferous woods.

Cap buff to warm brown, umbonate. Flesh cream, soft and full. Gills crowded, sinuate, notched and pink to dark ocher colored. Spores cream colored. Stem rust colored with brownish fibrils, tapering slightly upwards from more or less bulbous base. The mushroom has not ring.

Melanoleuca cognata on the First NatureWeb site.
Melanoleuca cognata on the MushroomExpert.Com Web site.