In many localities I find it quite plentiful, and it is so reported from Georgia. Southern and middle New Jersey woods abound with it, and at Mt. Gretna, Pa., it is always present in its growing months.
The cap is sometimes tinged with brown as are the angular, erect warts which are generally numerous, but often falling off or few and scattered. The flesh is white and smells like chloride of lime, but not nearly so strong as A. strobiliformis. The volva is broken up into floccose scales which cling to bulb and lower part of stem. These scales may be white and mealy or brownish. The entire fungus has a fluffy exterior, which is easily removed by rubbing. The annulus is torn, a part often adhering to the margin of the pileus and the gills. This and the long, tapering, rooting bulb are marked characteristics. The bulb is brittle. It is difficult to get the fungus from the ground entire.
Stem and cap are juicy, tender, mild in flavor, wholesome. It is not equal in flavor to A. rubescens, but is more delicate.
By many its properties have been stated as poisonous, doubtful. Quantities of it have been eaten by myself and friends. Hypodermic injection of its juices into the blood circulation of live animals prove it perfectly harmless.
A. can´dida Pk.—shining white. Pileus thin, broadly convex or nearly plane, verrucose with numerous small, erect, angular or pyramidal, easily separable warts, often becoming smooth with age, white, even on the margin. Flesh white. Gills rather narrow, close, reaching to the stem, white. Stem solid, bulbous, floccose-squamose, white, the annulus attached to the top of the stem, becoming pendent and often disappearing with age, floccose-squamose on the lower surface, striate on the upper, the bulb rather large, ovate, squamose, not margined, tapering above into the stem and rounded or merely abruptly pointed below. Spores elliptical, 10–13×8µ.
Pileus 3–6 in. broad. Stem 2.5–5 in. long, 5–8 lines thick, the bulb 1–1.5 in. thick in the dried specimens.
This is a fine large species related to A. solitaria, but differing from it in the character of its bulb and of its annulus. The bulb is not marginate nor imbricately squamose. Its scales are small and numerous. Nor is it clearly radicating, though sometimes it has a slight abrupt point or myceloid-agglomerated mass of soil at its base. The veil or annulus is large and well developed, but it is apt to fall away and disappear with age. Its attachment at the very top of the stem brings it closely in contact with the lamellæ of the young plant and the striations of its upper surface appear to be due to the pressure of the edges of these upon it. It separates readily from the margin of the pileus and is not lacerated. In the mature plant the warts have generally disappeared from the pileus and sometimes its margin is curved upward Peck, Bull. Torr. Bot. Club, Vol. 24, No. 3.
Woods. Auburn, N.Y., Alabama, U. and E.; Pennsylvania, West Virginia, New Jersey, August to October, McIlvaine.
A dozen or more specimens were found in oak woods near Philadelphia, and carefully tested. Their edible qualities were found to be precisely the same as A. solitaria.