Sometimes the pileus is covered with numerous white, delicate floccose scales, which give it a beautiful appearance, as in Fig. [26], from specimens (No. 3185 C. U. herbarium), collected on the campus of Cornell University among grass. The entire plant is very brittle, and easily broken. It is tender and excellent for food. I often eat the caps raw.
Hypholoma candolleanum Fr., occurs in woods on the ground, or on very rotten wood. It is not so fragile as H. appendiculatum and the gills are dark violaceous, not flesh color as they are in H. appendiculatum when they begin to turn, and nearly free from the stem.
Hypholoma lacrymabundum Fr.—This plant was found during September and October in wet grassy places in a shallow ditch by the roadside, and in borders of woods, Ithaca, N. Y., 1898. The plants are scattered or clustered, several often joined at the base of the stem. They are 4–8 cm. high, the cap 2–5 cm. broad, and the stem 4–8 mm. in thickness.
Figure 28.—Hypholoma lacrymabundum (natural size). Cap and stem tawny or light yellowish, with intermediate shades or shades of umber, surface with soft floccose scales. Copyright.
The pileus is convex to expanded, sometimes broadly umbonate in age, and usually with radiating wrinkles extending irregularly. On the surface are silky or tomentose threads not much elevated from the surface, and as the plant ages these are drawn into triangular scales which are easily washed apart by the rains. The color is tawny or light yellowish with intermediate shades, darker on the umbo and becoming darker in age, sometimes umber colored, and stained with black, especially after rains where the spores are washed on the pileus. The flesh is tinged with light yellow, or tawny, or brown, soft, and easily broken. The gills are sinuate, adnate, somewhat ventricose, very rarely in abnormal specimens anastomosing near the margin of the pileus, at first light yellowish, then shading to umber and spotted with black and rusty brown as the spores mature, easily breaking away from the stipe, whitish on the edge. Drops of moisture sometimes are formed on the gills. Basidia abruptly clavate, 30–35 × 10–12 µ. Cystidia hyaline, thin walled, projecting above the hymenium 40 µ, and 14–15 µ broad. Spores black, purple tinged, broadly elliptical and somewhat curved, 9–11 × 7–8 µ.
The stem is fleshy to fibrous, the same color as the pileus, floccose scaly more or less up to the veil, smooth or white pruinose above the veil, straight or curved, somewhat striate below.
The veil in young plants is hairy, of the same texture as the surface of the pileus, torn and mostly clinging to the margin of the pileus, and disappearing with age.
The general habit and different stages of development as well as some of the characters of the plant are shown in Fig. [28] (No. 4620 Cornell University herbarium). The edible qualities of this plant have not been tested.