Our Edible Toadstools and Mushrooms and How to Distinguish Them / A Selection of Thirty Native Food Varieties Easily Recognizable by their Marked Individualities, with Simple Rules for the Identification of Poisonous Species

by W. Hamilton Gibson

PLATE XXV
THE BEEFSTEAK MUSHROOM

Fistulina hepatica

Pileus: Diameter, average specimen, about six inches, occasionally twice or three times this size; color varying from pinkish to dark meaty red; surface roughened with minute papillæ; soft and moist.

Flesh: Light red, streaked with darker red; tender and juicy in young specimens; juice light red.

Tube surface: Creamy in color; tubes distinct from each other, crowded, very short, as shown in section opposite.

Stem: Short or obsolete, growing at the side.

Taste: Slightly acid.

Habitat: On the stumps and trunks of oak and chestnut trees.

Season: July-September.