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

Cordier says it possesses an agreeable odor of almonds and that Fries and his companions ate it raw in their mycological excursions.

Edible. Peck, Curtis.

P. leuco´melas (Pers.) Fr.—leucos, white; melas, black. Pileus 2–4 in. broad, fleshy, somewhat fragile, irregularly-shaped, silky, sooty-black. Flesh soft, reddish when broken. Stem 1–3 in. in length, stout, unequal, somewhat tomentose, sooty-black, becoming black internally. Pileus and stem becoming black in places. Pores rather large, unequal, ashy or whitish, becoming black in drying.

Spores pale brown, 10–12×4–5µ. Massee.

North Carolina, edible, Curtis; Ohio, a curious esculent. Morgan.

P. circina´tus Fr.—round. Pileus 3–4 in. broad, compact, thick round, plane, zoneless, velvety, reddish-brown. Flesh the same color. It forms duplicate strata of pilei, the inferior contiguous with the stem and corky; the superior compact, soft, floccose. Stem 1 in. thick and high, bearing a reddish-brown tomentum. Pores decurrent, entire, dusky-gray.

In fir woods.

A noble species, memorable for the stratified duplicate pilei.

Var. prolif´erus. Like the typical form but having one or more pilei developed from the upper surface of the first one. Fulton Chain. August. Peck, 46th Rep. N.Y. State Bot.

New York. On ground in borders of woods. September. Peck, 32d, 46th Rep.