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

Edible. The caps are rather tough but become glutinous and tender when well cooked. Flavor fine.

***** Pileus white, shining when dry.

C. cerussa´ta Fr.—cerussa, white lead. Pileus 1½-3 in. across, flesh thick at the disk, becoming thin toward the margin; convex then almost plane, obtuse, even, minutely floccose then almost glabrous, white. Gills adnate, then decurrent, very much crowded, thin, permanently white. Stem about 2 in. long, 3–5 lines thick, smooth, tough, elastic, naked, spongy and solid, white. Among dead leaves, etc.

Taste mild, smell almost obsolete. Stem rather thickened at the base and often tomentose. Pileus said to be gibbous, but not umbonate nor becoming rufescent. Gills not changing to yellowish. Fries.

Spores 3µ W.G.S.

Edible. Good.

C. phylloph´ila Fr. Gr.—leaf-loving. Whitish-tan. Pileus 1–3 in. across, rather fleshy, convex then plane, becoming umbilicate and depressed, sometimes wavy, smooth and even. Gills thin, subdistant, white then tinged with ocher, rather broad, very slightly decurrent. Stem 2–3 in. long, equal, stuffed then hollow, whitish, tough, silky-fibrillose. Spores 6×4µ.

Among leaves in woods, etc.

Spores 6×4µ Massee; 6×3µ W.G.S.; 5.5×2.8µ Morgan.

Found at Devon, Pa., 1888; Angora, West Philadelphia, 1897. It is equal to the Pleurotus ostreatus (oyster mushroom) in texture, but not so high in flavor. Well cooked it is an agreeable and valuable food.