The Sooty hygrophorous resembles the Club-stemmed clitocybe in the color of its cap, but in nearly every other respect it is different. When moist the cap is covered with an abundant gluten which when dry gives it a shining appearance as if varnished. The color varies from grayish-brown to a very dark or sooty-brown with the central part usually still darker or almost black, but never with an umbo. The flesh and the gills are white. The stem also is white or but slightly shaded toward the base with the color of the cap. It is variable in length and shape, being long or short, straight or crooked, everywhere equal in thickness or tapering toward the base. It is glutinous and unpleasant to handle.
The cap is 1–4 in. broad, the stem 2–4 in. long, and 4–8 lines thick. The plants grow either singly or in tufts. In the latter case the caps are often irregular from mutual pressure.
The plants occur early in October and November, in pine woods or woods of pine and hemlock intermixed.
This mushroom is tender and of excellent flavor, but its sticky and often dirty covering should be peeled before cooking. Peck, 49th Rep. N.Y. State Bot.
Found at Angora, near Philadelphia, August 1, 1897. Densely cespitose.
Raw it tastes like dead leaves. Tender and of fine flavor when cooked.
H. minia´tus Fr.—minium, red lead. (Plate [XXXVII], fig. 4, p. 146.) Pileus thin, fragile, at first convex, becoming nearly plane, glabrous or minutely squamulose, often umbilicate, generally red. Gills distant, adnate, yellow, often tinged with red. Stem slender, glabrous, colored like the pileus. Spores elliptical, white, 8µ long.
Cap ½-2 in. broad. Stem 1–2 in. long, 1–2 lines thick. Peck, 48th Rep. N.Y. State Bot.
Var. lutes´cens. Pileus yellow or reddish-yellow. Stem and gills yellow. Plant often cespitose. Peck, 41st Rep. N.Y. State Bot.
Spores 10×6µ Cooke; elliptical, white.