Var. re´pens Fr. Pileus more fleshy, depressed. Stem hollow, compressed, pruinate at the apex, with a creeping, string-like mycelium.
It is best distinguished by its white, villous, anastomosing, very much branched mycelium which creeps a long distance in a rooting string-like manner. The so-called roots are quite different from the stem, not a prolongation of the stem itself. Fries.
Clearly a variety of C. platyphylla. C. platyphylla is quite variable, even puzzling. Edible qualities the same.
C. long´ipes Bull.—longus, long; pes, a foot. Pileus 1–2 in. across, conical then expanded, umbonate, dry, minutely, beautifully velvety. Color from pale to date-brown, sometimes umber. Flesh white, thin, elastic. Gills white, broad, tough, thick, adnexed, distant, ventricose, rounded behind, emarginate. Stem 4–6 in. long, 2–4 lines thick, tapering upward, usually densely and minutely velvety like the cap, nearly same color, with a long, tapering root.
On much decayed stumps and logs. July to October. Closely resembles C. radicata. It is readily distinguished by its velvety cap and stem. It is more glutinous.
Spores spheroid, 12µ Q.
California. Edible. H. and M.
West Virginia mountains, 1880–1885; Cheltenham, Pa., 1889. McIlvaine.
Excepting from California, C. longipes has not previously been reported as found in the United States. It is not plentiful in the forests of West Virginia, yet I often found it upon rotting stumps and logs, solitary, but up to a dozen in the same vicinity. It is unmistakable. Its rich yet dull velvety cap and stem and the purity of its gills hold the finder’s admiration.
The caps fried or broiled are delicious, resembling in every way those of C. radicata.