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

There is a variety in which the cap is adorned with darker-colored spots or scales. This bears the name, variety subsquamosus. In all other respects it is like the species.

The gills are closely placed side by side. They are at first of a pale hue, but assume a darker and more definite tawny color with age. They are usually minutely uneven or eroded on the edge and transversely striate on the sides. They are slightly narrowed toward the stem.

The stem is generally a little longer than the width of the cap. It is commonly smooth, but sometimes sprinkled near the top with minute yellowish particles and adorned below with a few fibrils. It is hollow and has a distinct viscid bulbous base, the viscidity of which is a peculiar feature. This bulb in the very young plant is even broader than the young cap, that at this stage of development appears to rest upon it. The color of the bulb is usually like that of the cap, but the stem is commonly paler than either.

The cap is 2 to 4 inches broad, the stem 3 to 5 inches long, 3 to 8 lines thick. The plants are gregarious in woods and bushy places, and may be found from June to September. It sometimes grows in considerable abundance, and as an edible species it is not to be despised. Peck, 52d Rep. N.Y. State Bot.

Agaricus hæmorrhoidarius Schulz. Bleeding Mushroom. The bleeding mushroom is easily recognized, when fresh, by the red color assumed by wounds of the flesh either of the cap or stem. This character is also found in the seashore mushroom, A. maritimus, a species that has a solid stem and has not yet been found growing far from the sea. The cap is generally some shade of brown, but sometimes when young it is white. It is adorned with darker fibrils or scales, though these sometimes become obscure or disappear with age. When young it is hemispheric or very convex, but it soon becomes broadly convex or nearly flat, with the center either slightly depressed or somewhat prominent. The flesh is generally whitish or grayish white when first exposed to the air. It assumes the red color rather slowly and after a time loses it again.

The gills are pink or rarely whitish when young, but become brown or blackish brown with age. The stem is long or short, cylindric or tapering upward, sometimes slightly thickened or bulbous at the base, sometimes not. It is hollow, but the cavity small, at first fibrillose and more or less adorned with floccose scales toward the base, but these generally disappear with age, and the primary white color of the stem is apt to become darker with age. The collar is membranaceous and at first conceals the gills. It is persistent, silky and white or whitish, sometimes tinged with brown.

The cap is 2–4 inches broad; the stem 2–4 inches long, 3–5 lines thick. It grows in woods or bushy places and seems to prefer damp soil rich in vegetable mold. It may be found from August to October. It sometimes grows in clusters. It gives to milk in which it is stewed a brownish color. Its flavor is similar to that of the common mushroom. A variety in which the stem is commonly shorter and the pileus of a darker smoky brown color is sometimes abundant in low damp ground on Long Island. It may be called variety fumosus. Peck, 54th Rep. N.Y. State Bot.

Agaricus abruptus Pk. (A. silvicola Vitt., A. arvensis var. abruptus Pk.) (Plate [I], page 722.) Agaricus abruptus Pk. is described on page 343 as A. silvicola Vitt. It is very common in the woods of West Virginia, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. In the summer of 1901, I found it in Rockingham Co., N.C. The probabilities are that its spread is extensive.

Being the wood cousin of the field mushroom (A. campester) it deserves more than ordinary attention. It is found during months which do not favor the growth of the mushroom. It is equally good, though not so fleshy. It gives the true mushroom flavor to less flavored edible species when cooked with them.

When seen at a distance, growing in the woods, it has the appearance of an Amanita, but the color of the gills, which are never white after the cap opens and become as the spores ripen a blackish brown, distinguishes it at once. Neither has it a volva.