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

Spores 8–9µ diameter Massee.

Among grass.

Edible. Boston Myc. Club Bull. 1896.

** Gills and spores white then yellowish or bright lemon.

R. in´tegra Fr.—integer, entire, whole. Pileus 4–5 in. across, typically red, changing color, fleshy, campanulato-convex then expanded and depressed, fragile when full-grown, with a gluey pellicle, at length furrowed and somewhat tubercular at the margin. Flesh white, sometimes yellowish above. Stem at first short, conical, then club-shaped or ventricose, as much as 3 in. long, up to 1 in. thick, spongy-stuffed, commonly stout, even, shining white. Gills somewhat free, very broad, up to ¾ in., equal or bifid at the stem, somewhat distant, connected by veins, pallid-white, at length light yellow, somewhat powdered yellow with the spores.

Taste mild, often astringent. The most changeable of all species, especially in the color of the pileus which is typically red, but at the same time inclining to azure-blue, bay-brown, olivaceous, etc. Sometimes the gills are sterile and remain white. Fries.

Spores ellipsoid-spheroid or spheroid echinulate, globose, rough, 8–9µ C.B.P.; 9–10µ diameter, pale ochraceous. Massee.

It is difficult to separate R. integra from R. alutacea. The spores usually show upon the gills as pale dull yellow powder. It is of equal excellence.

R. decolo´rans Fr.—de and coloro, to color. Pileus 3–5 in. broad, color various, at first orange-red, then light yellow and becoming pale, fleshy, spherical then expanded and depressed, remarkably regular, viscid when moist, thin and at length striate at the margin. Flesh white, but becoming somewhat cinereous when broken, and more or less variegated with black spots when old. Stem elongated, 3–5 in., cylindrical, solid, but spongy within, often wrinkled-striate, white then becoming cinereous especially within. Gills adnexed, often in pairs, thin, crowded, fragile, white then yellowish.

Taste mild. Colors changeable according to a fixed rule, but not variable. The gills are not ochraceous-pulverulent as in R. integra, nor shining and pure yellow as in R. aurata, etc. Fries.