English naturalist Mordecai Cubitt Cooke described "Cortinarius rubellus" in 1887 from material collected by a Dr Carlyle at Orton Moss near Carlisle in northwestern England. The name was rarely used before 1980, however. "Cortinarius orellanoides" was described by Henry in 1937 from mushrooms growing under bracken ("Pteridium aquilinum") and beech in France, while Robert Kühner and Henri Romagnesi described "C. speciosissimus" (initially "C. speciosus", but that name had already been given to another species of webcap) from mushrooms growing in moss among "Vaccinium" in pine and spruce forests of the French and Swiss Jura. "Cortinarius rainierensis", described in 1950 by Alex H. Smith and Daniel Elliot Stuntz from material collected in Mount Rainier National Park in the United States, is a synonym. Klaus Høiland reviewed material of "C. orellanoides" and "C. speciosissimus" and determined that the mushrooms and spores were identical. The only difference was that "C. orellanoides" grew in beech and "C. speciosissimus" preferred conifers, yet he had also found the latter species growing under beech in Norway. He concluded the name should be "C. orellanoides", as that was the older name. Høiland and others had noted that "C. rubellus" was likely to be the same species as well. Gasparini queried this, however, because in Cooke's original illustrations of "C. rubellus", he noted that the spores were drawn as triangular or fig-shaped and were not consistent with descriptions of "C. orellanoides" or "C. speciosissimus".