THE GENUS LEPIOTA IN THE 

 UNITED STATES* 



C. H. KAUFFMAN 



A CAREFUL business man takes an inventory of stock on 

 hand at certain intervals in the development of his business. 

 It would appear that this common-sense procedure could be 

 applied equally to systematic mycology, and that if the knowl- 

 edge on hand were put together in compact form, and the 

 species no longer known or names no longer tenable could be 

 thrown on the rubbish heap, a large amount of confusion and 

 error in our accounts of existing plants would be eliminated. 

 It is with the hope of bringing about some such result that the 

 present paper has been prepared. Various sections of the United 

 States have been visited during the last ten years, and although 

 comparatively few new species were discovered and not nearly 

 all of the supposedly native or described species were collected, 

 yet a sufficient number of studies have been made to make a 

 review of the genus possible. 



The genus Lepiota comprises many species, and the mono- 

 graphic accounts that have appeared from time to time indicate 

 that the genus has special attractions for the mycologist. Dr. 

 Peck, in the 35th Report of the New York State Museum, as long 

 ago as 1884, gave a detailed account of eighteen species then 

 known to him from that state. C. G. Lloyd in one of his first 

 numbers of Mycological Notes, published in 1898, gives an 

 account of seven of the larger species. Since Mr. Lloyd knows 

 how to photograph fungi, it is to be regretted that he did not 

 follow up his first output of agaric pictures. Then came A. P. 

 Morgan's monograph of the genus, appearing in Volumes 12 and 



* Paper from the Department of Botany of the University of Michigan, 

 No. 216. 



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