Mr. H.I. Miller, Terre Haute, Ind., sent me a fine specimen weighing 10½ pounds.
The American species, as far as seen by the writer, changes to a light yellow when ageing. The entire fungus is edible and excellent, but the tender spines and more delicate parts make a dish equaled by few fungi.
H. erina´ceum Bull.—erinaceus, a hedgehog. 2–8 in. and more across. Tufts pendulous. White and yellowish-white becoming yellow-brownish, fleshy, elastic, tough, sometimes emarginate (broadly attached as if tuft was cut in two, sliced off where attached), a mass of latticed branches and fibrils. Spines 1½-4 in. long, crowded, straight, equal, pendulous. Stem sometimes rudimentary.
On trunks of oak, beech, etc. July to October.
Spores subglobose, 5–6µ diameter Massee; white, plain, 5×6µ W.G.S.
Alabama, Miss K. Skehan; Pennsylvania, McIlvaine; Massachusetts, Sprague; New York, Peck, Rep. 22.
Eaten in Germany and France. Cooke.
A dead beech trunk at Eagle’s Mere, Pa., in August, 1898, bore at least fifty pounds of it. It draped one side of the tree from root to top with yellowish, pendulous tufts, with spines up to 3 in. long, which waved in the wind. The spines and tender parts were stewed, and enjoyed by many. It shrinks very much in drying, becoming sour.
A´pus. Gr—without; a foot.
(Stemless, dimidiate, margin distinct.)