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

It is edible, of good substance when stewed, tender and of fair flavor.

Photographed by Dr. J.R. Weist. Plate XXXV.
PLEUROTUS OSTREATUS.

PLEURO´TUS.

Gr.—a side; Gr.—an ear.

Stem excentric, lateral or none. Epiphytal (very rarely growing on the ground), irregular, fleshy or membranaceous. Fries.

The excentric, generally lateral stem, absent in some of the species, separates this from other genera of the white-spored series.

Pileus varying from fleshy in the larger to membranaceous in the smaller forms, but never becoming woody. Veil generally wanting, when present its remains sometimes appear on the margin of the pileus, or as an evanescent ring on the stem. Gills, edge acute, generally decurrent, in some species with a well-marked tooth, rarely simply adnate. Stem fleshy, confluent and homogeneous with the pileus.

Wood, dead or alive; a few species appear on the ground.

P. ulmarius and others of the larger forms, when growing in an upright position, may have the stem central and the pileus horizontal. The stems of some species of Clitocybe and Omphalia if growing laterally are sometimes excentric and oblique.