THE PLANT WOELD 25 



THE MASKED TRICHOLOMA. 

 {Tricholoma personata Fr.) * 

 By E. M. Williams. 



ONE of the most peculiar species of the geuus Tricholoma is the 

 Masked Tricholoma. It is so characteristic, that once its haunts 

 are invaded, it is hardly likely to escape the eye of the collector. 

 The chances are that he will class it as a Coriinarius, if he is at all 

 familiar with that geuus, and he may consider it very well placed as 

 Gortinarius violaceiis. He would not so place it, however, if, as we are 

 told all good botanists should do, he first ascertained the color of the 

 spores. All good botanists, however, do not like to wait for sometimes 

 three or four hours to try to identify such an interesting plant as the 

 one in question, and if our good botanist had named his plant provis- 

 ionally and laid it away to collect the spores, he would be surprised to 

 find that instead of their being a rusty brown, as the color of the gills 

 had lead him to expect, they were of a very light salmon tint. Con- 

 siderable doubt might now be felt as to whether the class Leiicosporii 

 or Hypliorodii should claim this wayward child. The gills are rounded 

 behind and sometimes free, but the structure is in most respects very 

 unlike Lepiota and Pluteus, and the plant is fleshy and compact, and 

 bears many family traits common to Entoloma and Tricholoma. A 

 microscopic examination of the spores shows them to be regular and 

 smooth, and the color inclines to white rather than to a decided red, 

 hence he concludes that it must belong to the former genus. Once 

 located in the genus, the species is not hard to place, since it has only 

 one relative (Tricholoma nudum) w^hich closely resembles it, and these 

 two species are easily separated by the characters of the margin of the 

 pileus. 



Of course our hypothetical botanist may have been more fortunate 

 than to have made all the blunders indicated, but others have done 

 worse, and these lines are written for the edification of those who do 

 sometimes make mistakes in their determinations. 



The i^lant under discussion will not fail to delight as well as at- 

 tract the collector, for it is a dainty plant. It has a delicate pearl-gray- 



* Tricholoma personatum Fr. — Pileus compact, becominiLC soft, thick, convex 

 or plane, obtuse, regular, moist, glabrous, variable in color, generally pallid or cin- 

 ereous tinged with violet or lilac, the margin at first involute and rillose-priiinose, flesh 

 whitish ; lamellae broad, crowded, rounded behind, free, violaceous becoming sordid- 

 ivhitish or fuscous; stem generally thick, subbulbous, solid, fibrillose or villose-prui- 

 nose, whitish or colored like the pileus ; spores sordid-ivhite, subelliptical, .0003 to 

 .00035 i"- long, .00016 to .0002 broad. Pileus 2 to 5 in. broad ; stem 1 to 2 in. long, 

 6 to 12 lines thick. 



