Minnesota, Johnson; Mt. Gretna, Pa. On ground in mixed woods, gravelly ground. September to October. McIlvaine.
Many specimens were found scattered and in patches, and were eaten. They were of slight flavor but good.
P. auran´tia Pers. (Plate [CXXXVI], fig. 3, p. 508.) Sessile or protracted into a very short stem-like base, cespitose and irregular, or growing singly and then circular in outline and regular, becoming almost plane; thin, brittle, disk clear, deep orange or sometimes orange-red, externally much paler, or sometimes almost white, with a pink tinge, delicately tomentose, due to the presence of short, stout, blunt, 1–2-septate hyaline hairs; varying from ½-3.2 in. broad. Spores 15–16×7–8µ.
On the ground, often near stumps or among chips.
Sometimes crowded, large, with the margin raised and very much waved and more or less incised, at others scattered, smaller, almost or quite even and finally spread flat on the ground. Easily recognized by the large size, bright orange disk, pale, downy exterior, and the broadly elliptical spores covered with a delicate net-work of raised lines at maturity. Massee.
Massachusetts, Frost; Rhode Island, Bennett; Minnesota, Johnson; California, H. and M.; Alabama, Peters; New York, October, Peck, 23, 24 Rep.; Indiana, Richmond, November, Dr. J.R. Weist; West Virginia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania. On ground. September to October. McIlvaine.
Esculent. Cordier.
At Mt. Gretna, Pa., patches of it twenty feet long, made the ground along a road on the margin of a woods golden with its clusters. The plants grew from sand mixed with leaf-mold. I have eaten it for fifteen years. Fair flavor.
*** Cupulares. Subsessile, etc.
P. repan´da Wahlenb.—bent backward. Clustered or scattered, subsessile, contracted into a short, stout, stem-like base, which is often rooting; saucer-shaped, then quite expanded and the margin more or less split and wavy, sometimes drooping and revolute, extreme edge often crenate; 1.6–4 in. across; disk pale or dark brown or umber, more or less wrinkled toward the center, externally whitish, minutely granular. Spores obliquely 1-seriate, hyaline, smooth, continuous, elliptical, ends obtuse, 18–22×11–12µ; paraphyses septate, clavate and brownish at the tips. Massee.