Toadstools, mushrooms, fungi, edible and poisonous; one thousand American fungi / How to select and cook the edible; how to distinguish and avoid the poisonous, with full botanic descriptions. Toadstool poisons and their treatment, instructions to students, recipes for cooking, etc., etc.

by Charles McIlvaine; Robert K. Macadam

Esculent and very delicate. Paulet. Esculent. Cooke.

T. hu´mile Pers.—low, small. (Plate [XVIII], fig. 6, p. 60.) Very variable in form and color. Cap 2–3 in. across, convex then expanded, wavy, flattened, sometimes umbonate, sometimes depressed, glabrous, occasionally powdered with thin white dust, fragments of veil, sometimes viscid. Color changes with moisture, blackish, grayish, and having somewhat the appearance of an oyster. Gills rounded-adnexed, with a slight tooth, arcuately decurrent, crowded, 2–3 lines broad, whitish. Flesh soft, whitish or grayish. Stem 1–2 in. long, up to ½ in. thick, equal (misshapen by pressure when tufted), light gray, covered with fine down, stuffed, becoming hollow, soft, fragile. Gregarious, usually tufted.

Spores 7–8×5–6µ K.

Open woods, in gardens, among cinders, grass, etc., September to frost.

Woodland Cemetery, Philadelphia, 1897. McIlvaine.

Its tufted habit and fair size, fleshy cap of good flavor, make it a desirable species. It cooks readily and the caps are of fine flavor.

T. pæ´didum Fr.—pædidus, nasty. Pileus about 1-½ in. across. Flesh very thin, tough, becoming whitish; bell-shaped then convex, at length expanded, umbonate, at length depressed round the conical, prominent umbo, moist, virgate or streaked with innate fibrils radiating from the center, otherwise almost even, smoky-mouse color, opaque, margin naked. Gills adnexed with a slight decurrent tooth, slightly sinuate, crowded, narrow, white then gray. Stem about 1 in. long and 2 lines thick, base slightly bulbous, tough, slightly striate, naked, dingy-gray. Spores elliptic-fusiform, 10–11×5–6µ.

In gardens, on dung-hills, etc. Small, tough, color dingy, without a trace of violet tinge. Massee.

Edible. Cooks tender, and is of good flavor, notwithstanding its name, which in no way applies.

T. subpulverulen´tum Pers.—slightly dusty. Pileus 1–2½ in. across, convex then plane or depressed in center, even, innately pruinose, hoary, white, whitish, grayish, margin extending as a slight rim incurved beyond gills. Flesh white, thick, firm, hygrophanous. Gills rounded without a tooth, close, narrow, white. Stem 2–3 in. long, 3–5 lines thick, equal, solid, somewhat striate, whitish.