Armillaria mellea (Fries) Kummer Honey-fungus
Cap: width 50-150 mm. Stem: width 10-12 mm; length 75-150 mm.
Description: [Plate 10].
Cap: at first convex then more or less flattened or slightly depressed, very variable in colour, yellowish, olive, buff, sand-coloured or some shade of brown, at first covered in small, brownish or ochraceous scales which give the young cap a velvety aspect, but gradually the scales disappear with age except at the cap-centre; margin striate and usually paler than centre of the cap.
Stem: equal or swollen at base, often several grouped together, white at apex above a whitish, rather thick, ring which is flushed with olive-yellow or red-brown at its margin; stem-base fibrillose, whitish but finally red-brown at maturity.
Gills: adnate or slightly decurrent, whitish then flushed flesh colour and developing brownish spots with age or in cold, wet weather.
Flesh: with rather strong and unpleasant smell, white or flushed pinkish in the cap, brown and stringy in the stem.
Spore-print: very pale cream colour.
Spores: medium-sized, hyaline, ellipsoid, less than 10 µm in length (8-9 × 5-6 µm).
Marginal cystidia: variable, hyaline, cylindric and not well-differentiated.