The gills are crowded, rounded next to the stem, and nearly free but approaching close to the stem, more narrow toward the margin, with a faint tinge of lilac or violet tint when young, but often white.
The stem is short, solid, adorned with very minute fibers, downy or mealy particles when young and fresh, but becoming smooth with advancing age. The color of the stem is much like the cap but perhaps a shade lighter.
The cap is from one to five inches broad, and the stem from one to three inches high. It grows singly or in groups. It is found in thin woods and thickets. It delights to grow where an old saw mill has stood.
The finest specimens of this species that I ever saw grew on a pile of compost of what had been green cobs from the canning factory. They had lain in the pile for about three years and late in November the compost was literally covered with this species, many of whose caps exceeded five inches while the color and figuration of the plants were quite typical.
In English books this plant is spoken of as Blewits and in France as Blue-stems, but the stems in this country are inclined to be lilac or violet, and then only in the younger plants.
The spores are nearly elliptical and dingy white, but in masses on white paper they have a salmon tint. Its smooth, almost shining, unbroken epidermis and its peculiar peach-blossom tint distinguish it from all other species of the Tricholoma. There is a white variety, very plentiful in our woods, which is illustrated in Figure 62. They are found only in leaf-mould in the woods. September to freezing weather.
Tricholoma nudum. Bull.
The Naked Tricholoma. Edible.
Nudum, naked, bare; from the character of the margin. The pileus is two to three inches broad, fleshy, rather thin, convex, then expanded, slightly depressed; smooth, moist, the whole plant violet at first, changing color, margin involute, thin, naked, often wavy.
The gills are narrow, rounded behind, slightly decurrent when the plant becomes depressed, crowded, violet at first, changing to a reddish-brown without any tinge of violet.