BLACK-SPORED AGARICS. 49 



sometimes appears in greenhouses throughout the year. The plants 

 are 2-3 cm. high, and the caps 6-10 mm. broad. The plants are 

 crowded in large tufts, often growing on decaying wood, but also on 

 the ground, especially about much decayed stumps, but also in lawns 

 and similar places, where buried roots, etc., are decaying. They 

 resemble small specimens of a Coprinus. 



The pileus is whitish or gray, or grayish brown, very thin, oval, 

 then bell-shaped, minutely scaly, becoming smooth, prominently 

 sulcate or plicate, plaited. The gills are adnate, broad, white, gray, 

 then black. The spores are black, oblong, 8x6 /<. The stem is 

 very slender, becoming hollow, often curved. The entire plant is 

 very fragile, and in age becomes so soft as to suggest a Coprinus in 

 addition to the general appearance. Figure 49 is from plants collected 

 on decaying logs at Ithaca. 



GOMPHIDIUS Fr. 



The genus Gomphidius has a slimy or glutinous universal veil 

 enveloping the entire plant when young, and for a time is stretched 

 over the gills as the pileus is expanding. The gills are somewhat 

 mucilaginous in consistency, are distant and decurrent on the stem. 

 The gills are easily removed from the under surface of the pileus in 

 some species by peeling off in strips, showing the imprint of the gills 

 beneath the projecting portions of the pileus, which extended part 

 way between the laminae of the gills. The spores in some species 

 are blackish, and for this reason the genus has been placed by many 

 with the black-spored agarics, while its true relationship is probably 

 with the genus Hygrophorus or Paxilhis. 



Gomphidius nigricans Pk. The description given by Peck for this 

 plant in the 48th Report, p. 12, 1895, reads as follows : 



" Pileus convex, or nearly plane, pale, brownish red, covered 

 with a tough gluten, which becomes black in drying, flesh firm, 

 whitish ; lamella? distant, decurrent, some of them forked, white, 

 becoming smoky brown, black in the dried plant ; stem subequal, 

 longer than the diameter of the pileus, glutinous, solid, at first 

 whitish, especially at the top, soon blackish by the drying of the 

 gluten, whitish within, slightly tinged with red toward the base ; 

 spores oblong fusoid, 15-25 /< long, 6-7 /< broad. Pileus 1-2 inches 

 broad ; stem 1.5-2.5 inches long, 2-4 lines thick." 



"This species is easily known by the blackening gluten which 

 smears both pileus and stem, and even forms a veil by which the 

 lamella? in the young plant are concealed. In the dried state the 

 whole plant is black." 



