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

In woods. Autumn.

Gregarious, somewhat cespitose, tough, rather cartilaginous. Pileus truly obtuse, never streaked, often regular. Smell none. Fries.

Var. po´lius. Densely and connately cespitose. Pileus convex, then plane, obtuse, smooth, gray. Stem flexuous, smooth. Gills crowded, whitish. Edible. Cooke, 1891.

Var. polius found growing in large quantities in Boston navy yard in stone barn. Determined by Professor Peck. A fair edible. R.K. Macadam.

This woods-growing Clitocybe has been many times found by me in a hot-house in Haddonfield, N.J. Professor Peck confirmed my identification. Either its spores or mycelium had evidently been carried thither in the wood-earth used by florists. The hot-house crops appeared in March, and continued until June.

Several of the plants showed an effort to comply with some condition unusual to them, by producing gills upon the upper side of the pileus. Those below were venose and crisped.

This wild species had thus been brought into cultivation. The cultivated plants were much more tender than the wild. Both are excellent.

C. connex´a Pk.—connexus, joined. From its relation to Tricholoma. Pileus thin, convex or expanded, subumbonate, clothed with a minute appressed silkiness, white, the margin sometimes faintly tinged with blue. Gills crowded, narrow, white inclining to yellowish. Stem equal or tapering downward, solid, whitish.

Plant 2–3 in. high. Pileus 2–3 in. broad. Stem 2 lines thick.

Ground in woods. Croghan. September.