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

A. comptulus appears frequently in the latitude of Philadelphia. It is a neat species, but not substantial in flesh. Here it usually grows close to the ground. The ring is very evanescent.

Its edible qualities are those of A. campester.

A. silvat´icus Schaeff.—belonging to woods. Pileus thin, at first convex or bell-shaped, then expanded, gibbous or subumbonate, fibrillose or variegated with a few thin tawny brownish or reddish-brown spot-like adpressed scales, whitish, brownish or smoky-gray, the disk sometimes tinged with red or reddish-brown, the flesh white or faintly reddish. Lamellæ thin, close, free, narrowed toward each end, reddish, then blackish-brown. Stem rather long, equal or slightly tapering upward, hollow, whitish. Spores elliptical, 5–6.5×4–5µ.

Plant 3–5 in. high. Pileus 2–4 in. broad. Stem 4–6 lines thick.

Woods. Summer and autumn. Not common. Peck, 36th Rep. N.Y. State Bot.

Massachusetts, Farlow; Minnesota, Johnson; California—edible, H. and M.

West Virginia, 1881–1885, New Jersey, Pennsylvania. August to frost. In pine and mixed woods. McIlvaine.

Edible, Curtis. Edible, Peck.

In taste and smell A. silvaticus resembles A. silvicola, but is stronger. It is a frequent but not common species in the localities where I have found it. Quantities of it have not occurred, but myself and friends have eaten it for years, knowing no distinction in effect between it and allied species. Its strong taste requires that it be well cooked. It does not lose its high flavor, which may be objectionable to some. I prefer using its juices as a flavoring.

A. diminuti´vus Pk.—diminutive. Pileus thin, fragile, at first convex, then plane or centrally depressed, sometimes slightly umbonate, whitish or yellowish, faintly spotted with small thin silky appressed brownish scales, the disk brownish or reddish-brown. Lamellæ close, thin, free, ventricose, brownish-pink becoming brown, blackish-brown or black. Stem equal or slightly tapering upward, stuffed or hollow, smooth, pallid. Annulus thin, persistent, white. Spores elliptical 5×4µ.