Mixed woods. Suffolk county, N.Y. September.
The plants referred to this species are not uncommon on Long Island, growing on sandy soil in woods of oak and pine. They are usually more or less irregular and the pileus becomes fragile. It is quite variable in color, sometimes approaching a smoky-brown hue, again being nearly white. The taste of the typical form is said to be bitter, but the flavor of our plant is scarcely bitter. In other respects, however, it agrees well with the description of the species. Peck, 44th Rep. N.Y. State Bot.
Spores 6µ. W.G.S.
Flesh is tender. Cooked, of good body and peculiar but pleasant flavor. A valuable species, baked, scalloped, fried.
T. terri´ferum Pk.—terra, earth; fero, to bear. Pileus broadly convex or nearly plane, irregular, often wavy on the margin, glabrous, viscid, pale-yellow, generally soiled with adhering particles of earth carried up in its growth. Flesh white, with no decided odor. Gills thin, crowded, slightly adnexed, white, not spotted or changeable. Stem equal, short, solid, white, floccose-squamulose at the apex. Spores minute, subglobose, 3µ.
Pileus 3–4 in. broad. Stem 1–1.5 in. long, 6–8 lines thick.
Woods. Catskill mountains. September. Peck, 44th Rep. N.Y. State Bot.
Found in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey. August to frost. McIlvaine.
Not inviting, hard to clean, nevertheless edible and good.
T. portento´sum Fr.—portentosus, strange, monstrous. Pileus 3–5 in. broad, sooty, livid, sometimes violaceous, fleshy, but thin in comparison with the stoutness of the stem, convexo-plane, somewhat umbonate, unequal and turned up, viscid, streaked with black lines (innate fibrils), but otherwise even and smooth, the very thin margin naked. Flesh not compact, white, fragile. Stem commonly 3 in. often 4–6 in. long, 1 in. thick, stout, solid, the whole remarkably fibrous-fleshy, somewhat equal, naked, but fibrilloso-striate, white; the base, which is occasionally attenuato-rooted, villous. Gills rounded, almost free, 3–4 lines to as much as 1 in. broad, distant, white, but varying, becoming pale-gray or yellow. Fries.