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

P. stip´ticus Fr.—stypticus, astringent. Pileus ½-1 in. broad, cinnamon becoming pale, arid, thin, but not membranaceous, kidney-shaped, pruinose, the cuticle separating into furfuraceous scales. Stem not reaching 1 in. long, solid, definitely lateral, compressed, dilated upward, ascending, pruinose, paler than the gills. Gills ending determinately (not decurrent), thin, very narrow, crowded, elegantly connected by veins, cinnamon. Fries.

Gregarious, cespitose, remarkable for its astringent taste. The pileus sometimes has a funnel-shaped appearance with lobes all around.

On stumps, etc. Common. August to February.

Reckoned poisonous. Stevenson.

Spores obovoid-spheroid, 2–3×1–2µ K.; 3×4µ W.G.S.

Plentiful and general. The markings upon the cap in moist weather are sometimes exquisitely regular.

The immediate and lasting unpleasantness of this fungus to mouth and throat, whether cooked or raw, will cancel all desire to eat of it forevermore. A nibble will detect it. It is reckoned poisonous, and may be. No one but a determined suicide would resort to it. Dr. Lambotte asserts that it is a violent purgative.

XER´OTUS Fr.

Gr—dry; Gr—an ear.