The caps of C. confluens are of excellent substance and flavor. Their quantity makes up for their small size. I have gathered them 2 in. across, but their average size is about 1 in. They dry well.
Lævi´pedes.
* Gills broad, more or less distant.
C. esculen´ta Wulf.—esculent. Pileus ½ in. and more broad, ochraceous-clay, often becoming dusky, slightly fleshy, convex then plane, orbicular, obtuse, smooth, even or when old slightly striate. Flesh tough, white, savory. Stem 1 in. and more long, scarcely 1 line thick, or thread-like and wholly equal, obsoletely tubed, tough, stiff and straight, even, smooth, slightly shining, clay-yellow, with a long perpendicular, commonly smooth, tail-like root. Gills adnexed, even decurrent with a very thin small tooth, then separating, very broad, limber, somewhat distant, whitish, sometimes clay-color.
Gregarious but never cespitose. The tube of the stem is very narrow. Stevenson.
The smallest edible Collybia. Cooke. Edible. In dense woods. Curtis. It is dried and preserved. Cordier.
In pastures and grassy places. Spring and early summer.
Edible, but rather bitter flavor. In Austria, where it is in great plenty in April, large baskets are brought to market under the name of Nagelschwämme—nail mushrooms.
Professor Peck describes C. esculentoides Pk., 49th Rep. N.Y. State Bot., which he states: “Differs from the type in its paler and more ochraceous color and in its farinaceous flavor, and is related to the European C. esculenta from which it differs essentially in the umbilicate pileus and in the absence of any radicating base to the stem.”