(d) Saprophytes—terrestrial agarics
Melanoleuca melaleuca (Fries) Murrill
Cap: width 40-110 mm. Stem: width 50-80 mm; length 50-90 mm.
Description:
Cap: dark brown, umber or vandyke when moist, hygrophanous and becoming very much paler on drying almost tan, convex then flattened sometimes umbonate, smooth or wrinkled.
Stem: white or whitish covered in brownish fibrils which increase in number with age or after handling; solid, rather elastic and slightly swollen towards the base.
Gills: white, broad, crowded and as if cut out from behind before joining the stem.
Flesh: with pleasant smell, soft, white, becoming brownish with age, particularly in the stem.
Spore-print: very pale ivory-colour.
Spores: medium-sized, ellipsoid, hyaline under the microscope and roughened by distinct dots which become blue-black when mounted in solutions containing iodine, 8 × 4-5 µm.