Grows where it pleases and abundantly throughout the land. In wet weather I have found it in July and late in autumn.
Professor Peck says: It is scarcely surpassed by any mushroom in tenderness of substance and agreeableness of flavor.
The gunner for partridges will not shoot rabbits; the knowing toadstool seeker will pass all others where H. miniatus abounds.
H. puni´ceus Fr.—blood-red. Pileus 2–4 in. broad, glittering blood-scarlet, in dry weather and when old becoming pale especially at the disk, slightly fleshy for its breadth, at first bell-shaped, obtuse, commonly repand or lobed, very irregular, even, smooth, viscid. Flesh of the same color, fragile. Stem 3 in. long, ½-1 in. thick, solid when young, at length hollow, very stout (not compressed), ventricose (attenuated at both ends), striate, and for the most part squamulose at the apex, when dry light yellowish or of the same color as the pileus, always white and often incurved at the base. Gills ascending, ventricose, 2–4 lines broad, thick, distant, white-light yellow or yellow and often reddish at the base. Fries.
The largest of the group and very handsome. It certainly differs from H. coccineus, for which it is commonly mistaken, in stature, in the adnexed gills, and in the white base of the striate stem. The attachment of the gills varies, but from the form of the pileus they ascend to the base of the cone and appear free.
In pastures. Stevenson.
Spores 8×5µ Cooke.
Edible. Cooke. No harm would come of confusing it with the vermilion mushroom—H. miniatus Pk.
H. con´icus Fr.—conical. Pileus thin, submembranaceous, fragile, smooth, conical, generally acute, sometimes obtuse, the margin often lobed. Gills rather close and broad, subventricose, narrower toward the stem, free, terminating in an abrupt tooth at the outer extremity, scarcely reaching the margin, yellow. Stem equal, fibrous-striate, yellow, hollow.