Bot. Char. Veil forming a partial ring-like investment, more or less persistent; stalk robust, subequal, distinct from the pileus; pileus fleshy, more or less campanulate when young, almost flat when fully expanded; sometimes sticky, sometimes scaly or else fibrillose, sometimes naked; gills unequal, free, or connected with the stalk, broad and deepening in colour.
In addition to the ring, some have a very fugacious volva or velum, some both one and the other.
Esculent species: Ag. campestris and Georgii.
[In the four next subgenera, from 31 to 34, Hypholoma, Psilocybe, Psathyra, and Coprinarius, there are no esculent species.]
Subgenus 35. Coprinus.[145]
Bot. Char. Gills free, unequal, thin, simple, changing colour, at length deliquescent. Veil universal, floccose, fugacious; stem fistulose, straight, elongated, brittle, subsquamulose, whitish; pileus membranaceous, rarely subcarnose, when young ovato-conic, then campanulate, at length torn and revolute, deliquescent, distinct from the stem, clothed with the flocculose fragments of the veil.
Fugacious funguses, growing in rich dungy places or on rotten wood.
Esculent species: Ag. comatus and atramentarius.