In [Plate 3] I have presented the reprobate Amanita vernus in its protean progressive proportions from infancy to maturity. This is especially desirable, in that the fungus is equally dangerous as an infant, and also because the development of its growth specially emphasizes botanically the one important structural character by which the species or genus may be easily distinguished. Let us, then, consider the specimen as a type of the tribe Agaricus (gilled mushroom, [see p. 79]), genus Amanita.
Vegetation of an Agaric
The danger signal
Year after year we are sure of finding this species, or others of the genus, especially in the spring and summer, its favorite haunt being the woods. Its spores, like other mushrooms, are shed upon the ground from the white gills beneath, as described in our chapter on "Spore-prints," or wafted to the ends of the earth on the breeze, and eventually, upon having found a suitable habitat, vegetate in the form of webby, white, mould-like growth—mycelium—which threads through the dead leaves, the earth, or decaying wood. This running growth is botanically considered as the true fungus, the final mushroom being the fruit, whose function is the dissemination of the spores. After a rain, or when the conditions are otherwise suitable, a certain point among this webby tangle beneath the ground becomes suddenly quickened into astonishing cell-making energy, and a small rounded nodule begins to form, which continues to develop with great rapidity (Plate 2). In a few hours more it has pushed its head above ground, and now appears like an egg, as at A, [Plate 3]. The successive stages in its development are clearly indicated in the drawings. Each represents an interval of an hour or two, or more, the most suggestive and important feature being the outer envelope, or volva, which encloses the actual mushroom—at first completely, then in a ruptured condition, until in the mature growth the only vestige of it which appears above ground are the few shreds generally, though not always, to be seen on the top of the cap. The most important character of this deadly Amanita is, therefore, apparently with almost artful malice prepense, often concealed from our view in the mature specimen, the only remnant of the original outer sack being the cup or socket about the base of the stem, which is generally hidden under ground, and usually there remains after we pluck the specimen.
Plate II.—MYCELIUM, AND EARLY VEGETATION OF A MUSHROOM
The poison-cup
This "poison-cup" may be taken as the cautionary symbol of the genus Amanita, common to all the species. Any mushroom or toadstool, therefore, whose stem is thus set in a socket, or which has any suggestion of such a socket, should be labelled "poison"; for, though some of the species having this cup are edible, from the popular point of view, it is wiser and certainly safer to condemn the entire group. But the cup must be sought for. We shall thus at least avoid the possible danger of a fatal termination to our amateur experiments in gustatory mycology; for, while various other mushrooms might, and do, induce even serious illness through digestive disturbance, and secondary, possibly fatal, complications, the Amanita group are now conceded to be the only fungi which contain a positive, active poisonous principle whose certain logical consequence is death.
The "veil" or shroud