The Flesh not very thick, soft, permanently white. Pileus at first ovate, finally expanded, cuticle soon breaking up into brown scales, excepting upon the umbo, umbo smooth, dark-brown, distinct. The caps vary in shades of brown, sometimes they have a faint tinge of lavender. Gills whitish, crowded, narrowing toward the stem, and very remote from it. Stem variable in length, often very long, tubular, at first stuffed with light fibrils, quite bulbous at base, generally spotted or scaly with peculiar snake-like markings below the ring, which is thick, firm and readily movable. When the stem is removed from pileus it leaves a deep cavity extending nearly to the cuticle.
Pileus 3–6 in. broad. Stem 5–12 in. high, about ½ in. thick.
White spores elliptical, 14–18×9–11µ Peck; 12–15×8–9µ Massee; 14×10µ Lloyd.
Readily known by its extremely tall stem, shaggy cap, distinct umbo and the channel between the gills and stem. Resembles no poisonous species.
Before cooking the scurf should be rubbed from the caps, which alone should be eaten, as the stem is tough. Though the flesh is thin, the gills are meaty and have a pleasant, nutty flavor. Fried in butter it has few equals. It makes a superior catsup.
L. racho´des Vitt. Gr.—a ragged, tattered garment. Pileus very fleshy, but very soft when full grown, globose then flattened or depressed, not umbonate, at first incrusted with a thick, rigid, even, very smooth, bay-brown, wholly continuous cuticle, which remains entire at the disk but otherwise soon becomes elegantly reticulated with cracks; these very readily separate into persistent, polygonal, concentric scales, which are revolute at the margin and attached to the surface with beautifully radiating fibers, the surface remaining coarsely fibrillose-downy. Flesh white, immediately becoming saffron-red when broken, easily separating from the apex of the distinct stem, which is encircled with a prominent collar. Stem stout, at the first bulbous with a distinct margin upon the bulb, conical when young, then elongated, attenuated upward, as much as a span long, very robust, 1 in. thick, and more at the base, always even, and without a trace of scales or even of fibrils although the appearance is obsoletely silky, wholly whitish, hollow within, stuffed with spider-web threads, the walls remarkably and coarsely fibrous. Ring movable, adhering longer to the margin of the pileus than to the apex of the stem, hence rayed with fibers at the circumference, clothed beneath with one or two zones of scales. Gills very remote, tapering toward each end or broadest at the middle, crowded, whitish, sometimes reddening. Stevenson.
Veil remarkable in its development and thick margin.
Spores 6×8µ W.G.S.
Fort Edward, Howe; Westfield, N.Y., Miss L.M. Patchen; Pennsylvania, New Jersey, McIlvaine.
A heavier species than L. procera, of which by some writers it has been considered a variety, but it differs in the absence of umbo and flesh becoming tinged with red.