152 ] The Classification of Lower Organisms 



of five classes, white, pink to red, light brown to rust color, dark brown or purple, or 

 black), will find identification reasonably easy. Popular interest in agarics is con- 

 cerned, of course, with the edible and poisonous. Many amateur mycophagists need to 

 be convinced that there is no single test for poisonous agarics except the final one. 

 One who encounters an unfamiliar species may chew and eat a small scrap of it; if 

 it is tasty and without bad after-effects, one may collect and eat the same species 

 when one again recognizes it by its technical characters. At the present point, it is 

 expedient to mention only a few examples. 



Deliquescent agarics with black spores are called inky caps and constitute the genus 

 Coprinus. All are edible; they should be fried in butter and served on toast. 



Fruits of Agaricus campestris, the field mushroom, are rather large, white or gray 

 on top, the stalk marked by a ring but no cup, the gills pink when young, dark brown 

 to nearly black when mature. Anything of this character is safely edible. 



Fruits of Pleurotus have an excentric or lateral stalk, or none, being shelf- or 

 bracket-like, fleshy, with white spores. All species are edible. The most familiar is 

 the oyster mushroom, P. ostreatus, producing large white to gray fruits on dead 

 trees, commonly on poplars. 



Fruits of Amanita are marked by cup and ring, and bear white spores. Some species 

 are known to be edible; others, as the fly agaric, A. muscaria, recognized by a red cap 

 flecked with white, are extremely poisonous. 



Family 7. Podaxacea [Podaxaceae] Fischer in Engler and Prantl Nat. Pflanzenfam. 

 I Teil, Abt. 1**: 332 (1900). Gyrophragmium produces fruits much like those of 

 Agaricus, but coming up only to ground level, and drying and shattering irregularly 

 instead of opening like mushrooms. The gills are quite evident in immature fruits. 

 Podaxon is similar, but does not form definite gills. These organisms are convention- 

 ally stationed in the next order, but their obvious natural position is next to 

 Agaricacea. 



Order 7. Dermatocarpa [Dermatocarpi] Persoon Syst. Meth. Fung, xiii (1801). 

 Order Lytothccii Persoon op. cit. xv. 

 Class Gasteromycetes and orders Angiogastres and Trichospermi Fries Syst. Myc. 



2: 275, 276 (1822). 

 Family Gasteromycetes Fries Epicrisis 1 (1836) 

 Order Gasteromycetes Winter in Rabenhorst Kryptog.-Fl. Deutschland 1, Abt. 



1:864(1884). 

 Suborders Phallineae, Hymenogastrineae, Lycoperdineae, Nidulariineae, and 

 Plectobasidiineae Engler in Engler and Prantl Nat. Pflanznfam. I Teil, Abt. 

 1**: iv (1900). 

 Orders Phallineae, Lycoperdineae, and Nidularineae Campbell Univ. Textb. 



Bot. 186, 187, 188 (1902). 

 Orders Hymenogastrales, Phallales, Lycoperdales, Nidulariales, and Sclcroder- 



matales Bessey in Univ. Nebraska Studies 7: 306-307 (1907). 

 Orders Plectobasidiales and Gasteromycetes Gaumann Vergl. Morph. Pilze 537, 

 544(1926). 

 Basidiomycetes producing holobasidia enclosed in fruits, not forming a continuous 

 layer or not exposed as such, not discharging the spores directly into the air, sterig- 

 mata more or less suppressed. 



Distinguished by negative characters, this order may be suspected of being artificial; 

 but Engler's attempt to correct this produced orders which were small and numerous 



