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

All of the genus can be cooked in any desired way.

ANALYSIS OF SPECIES.

[*] Gills at first or very soon pink or rosy.

[**] Gills at first brownish or gray.

[***] Gills at first white or whitish.

* Gills at first or very soon pink or rosy.

A. campes´ter Linn.—campus, a field. (Plate [XCI], fig. 4 (3 figs.) fig. 5, section, p. 332). Pileus at first hemispherical or convex, then expanded with decurved margin or nearly plane, smooth, silky floccose or hairy squamulose, the margin extending beyond the lamellæ, the flesh rather thick, firm, white. Lamellæ free, close, ventricose, at first delicate pink or flesh color, then blackish-brown, subdeliquescent. Stem equal or slightly thickened toward the base, stuffed, white or whitish, nearly or quite smooth. Ring at or near the middle, more or less lacerated, sometimes evanescent. Spores elliptical, 6–8×4–5µ.

Plant 2–4 in. high. Pileus 1.5–4 in. or more broad. Stem 4–8 lines thick. Peck, 36th Rep. N.Y. State Bot.

Spores spheroid-ellipsoid, 9×6µ K.; 6×8µ W.G.S.

The varieties of A. campester are numerous. All of them are edible and vary but slightly in their excellence.