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

Resembling Volvaria in all respects but the volva. Spores rosy.

Several of the genus are edible. Pluteus cervinus is one of our earliest, persistent, plentiful, delicious food species. The caps of those tested are tender, easily cooked and best fried.

ANALYSIS OF SPECIES.

[*] Cuticle of the pileus separating into fibrils or down, which at length disappear.

[**] Pileus frosted with atoms, somewhat powdery.

[***] Pileus naked, smooth.

* Cuticle of pileus fibrillose, etc.

P. cervi´nus Schaeff.—cervus, a deer. (Plate [LXI], fig. 1, p. 242.) Pileus fleshy, at first campanulate, then convex or expanded, even, glabrous, generally becoming fibrillose or slightly floccose-villose on the disk, occasionally cracked, variable in color. Lamellæ broad, somewhat ventricose, at first whitish, then flesh-colored. Stem equal or slightly tapering upward, firm, solid, fibrillose or subglabrous, variable in color. Spores broadly elliptical, 6.5–8×5–6.5µ.

Plant 2–6 in. high. Pileus 2–4 in. broad. Stem 3–6 lines thick.

The typical form has the pileus and stem of a dingy or brown color and adorned with blackish fibrils, but specimens occur with the pileus white, yellowish, cinereous, grayish-brown or blackish-brown. I have never seen it of a true cervine color. It is sometimes quite glabrous and smooth to the touch and in wet weather it is even slightly viscid. It also occurs somewhat floccose-villose on the disk, and the disk, though usually plane or obtuse, is occasionally slightly prominent or subumbonate. The form with the surface of the pileus longitudinally rimose or chinky is probably due to meteorological conditions. The gills, though at first crowded, become more lax with the expansion of the pileus. They are generally a little broader toward the marginal than toward the inner extremity. Their tendency to deliquesce is often shown by their wetting the paper on which the pileus has been placed for the purpose of catching the spores. The stem is usually somewhat fibrous and striated but forms occur in which it is even and glabrous. When growing from the sides of stumps and prostrate trunks it is apt to be curved. Two forms deserve varietal distinction.