The first and second varieties have occurred within our limits. The first also has the stem elastic and furnished with a whitish or grayish tomentum or strigose villosity at the base, when growing among moss in swamps. A form occurred in Sandlake, in which some of the specimens were proliferous. The umbo had developed into a minute pileus. With us the prevailing color of the pileus is yellowish-red or cinnamon-red. Sometimes the color is almost the same as that of L. volemus and L. hygrophoroides, and again it is a tan-color or a bay-red, as in L. camphoratus, from which such specimens are scarcely separable, except by their lack of odor. In young plants the pileus usually has a moist appearance, which is sometimes retained in maturity. Cordier pronounces the species edible, and says that he has tested it several times without inconvenience. Peck, 38th Rep. N.Y. State Bot.
Spores 10µ Cooke; 7µ W.G.S.
West Virginia mountains, 1881–1885; Pennsylvania, New Jersey, everywhere on moist ground. July to October. McIlvaine.
Edible. Curtis.
The description of Fries as enlarged and modified by Professor Peck, together with that of the varieties placed to the credit of the species by Gillet, are given above in full. The species with its ascribed varieties is common and well known. Var. ba´dius occurs in West Virginia and Pennsylvania. They are all edible and vary but little in quality. L. subdulcis requires long cooking.
L. muta´bilis Pk.—changeable. Pileus 2–4 in. broad, thin, convex or nearly plane, zonate when moist, reddish-brown, the disk and zones darker, zoneless when dry, flesh colored like the pileus. Milk sparse, white, taste mild. Gills narrow, close, adnate, whitish, with a yellowish or cream-colored tint when old. Stem 1–2 in. long, 3–5 lines thick, equal or tapering upward, stuffed or spongy within, glabrous, colored like the pileus. Spores subglobose, rough, 7.6µ broad.
Low, damp places. Selkirk and Yaphank, N.Y. June and September.
The species is allied to L. subdulcis, from which the larger size and zonate pileus separate it. The zones disappear in the dry plant, and this change in the marking of the pileus suggests the specific name. They appear to be formed by concentric series of more or less confluent spots and are suggestive of such species as L. deliciosus and L. subpurpureus. Peck, 43d Rep. N.Y. State Bot.
West Virginia, Pennsylvania. Solitary but frequent. In moist woods and margins of woods. June to October. McIlvaine.
I have been familiar with and eaten this plant since 1882, but thought it might be a variety of L. deliciosus, with light-colored milk.