KauffmAn: The Genus Gomphidius 125 



color, at first floccose, then lacerate-fibrillose or denuded, some- 

 times slightly viscid; flesh compact, concolorous, "empire-yellow" 

 (Ridg.) towards base. Taste often tardily but slightly dis- 

 agreeable. Cystidia abundant, cylindrical, with slender pedicel 

 which extends below the hymenium, hyaline, rounded at apex, 

 150-180 X 10-15 (18) n, variable in length and thickness. In 

 dense coniferous forests of fir and hemlock. 



The unique tomentose-hairy surface is due to the thick uni- 

 versal veil which surrounds the young unopened plant. On the 

 stem as it elongates the veil is lacerated, broken into fibrillose 

 shreds or washed off in some cases. Sometimes the portion of 

 it encircling the apex of the stem persists as a floccose-hairy 

 annulus. The inferior veil is fibrillose-silky and concolorous, soon 

 disappearing. The base of the stem is often deeply imbedded in 

 conifer-needle beds or in moss cushions. The spores are as given 

 by Murrill. 



Gomphidius vinicolor Peck. — The dried type specimens at 

 Albany are distinctly red-brown. A collection in the Atkinson 

 herbarium from Dr. Herbst and collected in Lehigh Co., Penn- 

 sylvania, is very probably the same, although the spores average 

 quite a little shorter. The spores of this species are notable for 

 their more ventricose shape and appear much more fusiform 

 under the microscope than most, especially those of G. viscidus 

 forma columhiana which also dries reddish-brown and of which 

 the spores tend to be subcylindric in shape. I have spoken 

 before (8, p. 171) of the tendency for small or late-growing plants 

 of this genus to have shorter spores than in "normal" plants. 

 Considering that Peck describes the gluten of the pileus as turning 

 black on drying, it is surprising to find the type specimens of 

 this species unblackened, which indicates that the gluten or 

 viscidity is thin and disappears. The species is rare. I should 

 hesitate to refer here the plants from around San Francisco, 

 California, some of which I examined at the New York Botanical 

 Garden. (See Mycologia 4: 307.) The form mentioned by me 

 in Agaricaceae of Michigan I, p. 171, as form "minor," is a slender 

 little plant and cannot be placed here. 



Gomphidius viscidus Fr. — European specimens are well repre- 

 sented in American herbaria. The cystidia are abundant but 



