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

In woods.

Known by the clear lemon-yellow or citron-colored pileus and the persistently white gills and stem. The taste is mild at first, but becomes slightly acrid if kept in the mouth for a short time. Massee.

R. citrina can hardly be classed among the acrid species. The taste is slightly of cherry-bark and disappears in cooking. It is usually found in patches which contain ten to twenty individuals. It is a species of fair quality.

R. fra´gilis Fr.—fragile. Pileus 1–1½ in. broad, rarely more, flesh-color, changing color, very thin, fleshy only at the disk, at the first convex and often umbonate, then plane and depressed, pellicle thin, becoming pale, slightly viscid in wet weather; margin very thin, tuberculoso-striate. Stem 1½-2 in. long, spongy within, soon hollow, often slightly striate, white. Gills slightly adnexed, very thin, crowded, broad, ventricose, all equal, shining white. Fries.

Very acrid. Smaller and more fragile than the rest of the group, directly changing color. The color is variable, often opaque, typically flesh-color, when changed in color white externally and internally, often with reddish spots. Among varieties of color is to be noted a livid flesh-colored form, with the disk becoming fuscous.

It is not easy to define it from fragile forms of R. emetica, but the gills are much more crowded, thinner, and often slightly eroded at the edge, ventricose; the pileus thinner and more lax, etc. Stevenson.

Var. nivea Fr.—nivea, snowy. Whole plant white.

Spores minutely echinulate 8–10×8µ Massee.

Though one of the peppery kind, I have not, after fifteen years of eating it, had reason to question its edibility. The caps are not meaty, but what there is of them is good.

R. puncta´ta Gillet—punctata, dotted. Mild. Pileus 1½-2½ in. across. Flesh thin, white, reddish under the cuticle; convex then flattened, viscid, rosy, disk darkest, punctate with dark reddish point-like warts, pale when old; margin striate. Gills slightly adnexed, 2 lines broad, white then yellowish, edge often reddish. Stem about 1 in. long, 4–5 lines thick, attenuated and whitish at the base, remainder colored like the pileus, stuffed.