Plate 31, Fig. 94.—Collybia radicata. Caps grayish-brown to grayish and white in some small forms. (Natural size.) Copyright.
Plate 32, Fig. 95.—Collybia velutipes. Cap yellowish or reddish yellow, viscid, gills white, stem dark brown, velvety hairy (natural size). Copyright.
Collybia velutipes Curt. Edible.—This is very common in woods or groves during the autumn, on dead limbs or trunks, or from dead places in living ones. The plants are very viscid, and the stem, except in young plants, is velvety hairy with dark hairs. Figure [95] is from plants (No. 5430, C. U. herbarium) collected at Ithaca, October, 1900.
Collybia longipes Bull., is a closely related plant. It is much larger, has a velvety, to hairy, stem, and a much longer root-like process to the stem. It has been sometimes considered to be merely a variety of C. radicata, and may be only a large form of that species. I have found a few specimens in the Adirondack mountains, and one in the Blue Ridge mountains, which seem to belong to this species.
Collybia platyphylla Fr. Edible.—This is a much larger and stouter plant than Collybia radicata, though it is not so tall as the larger specimens of that species. It occurs on rotten logs or on the ground about rotten logs and stumps in the woods from June to September. It is 8–12 cm. high, the cap 10–15 cm. broad, and the stem about 2 cm. in thickness.
The pileus is convex becoming expanded, plane, and even the margin upturned in age. It is whitish, varying to grayish brown or dark brown, the center sometimes darker than the margin, as is usual in many plants. The surface of the pileus is often marked in radiating streaks by fine dark hairs. The gills are white, very broad, adnexed, and usually deeply and broadly notched next the stem. In age they are more or less broken and cracked. The spores are white, elliptical, 7–10 × 6–7 µ.
The plant resembles somewhat certain species of Tricholoma and care should be used in selecting it in order to avoid the suspected species of Tricholoma.