The pileus in this species is sometimes spotted with white. The bulbous white stem is adorned with lilac-colored fibrils. Peck, 35th Rep. N.Y. State Bot.
Sparingly found among roots at Mt. Gretna, Pa., September, 1897–1898.
The caps are fairly good.
Inolo´ma. (Gr—fiber; Gr—a fringe.)
* Gills violaceous then cinnamon.
C. viola´ceus Fr. (Plate [LXXXII], fig. 2, page 306.) One of our most plentiful and beautiful autumnal fungi. As the American plant differs somewhat from the European, Professor Peck’s description is given.
Pileus convex, becoming nearly plane, dry, adorned with numerous persistent hairy tufts or scales, dark violet. Lamellæ rather thick, distant, rounded or deeply notched at the inner extremity, colored like the pileus in the young plant, brownish-cinnamon in the mature plant. Stem solid, fibrillose, bulbous, colored like the pileus. Spores subelliptical, 12.5µ long.
The Violet cortinarius is a very beautiful mushroom and one easy of recognition. At first the whole plant is uniformly colored, but with age the gills assume a dingy ochraceous or brownish-cinnamon hue. The cap is generally well formed and regular and is beautifully adorned with little hairy scales or tufts. These are rarely shown in figures of the European plant, but they are quite noticeable in the American plant and should not be overlooked. The flesh is more or less tinged with violet.
The gills when young are colored like the cap. They are rather broad, notched at the inner extremity and narrowed toward the margin of the cap. When mature they become dusted with the spores whose color they take.
The stem also is colored like the cap. It is swollen into a bulb at the base and sometimes a faint ochraceous band may be seen near the top. This is due to the falling spores which lodge on the webby filaments of the veil remaining attached to the stem.