THE /1/KlERIDp BOTpiST. 



Vol. VII. BINGHAMTON, N. Y., AUGUST, 1904. No. 2. 



THE GREEN RUSSULA OR VERDETTE. 



{Russula virescens.) 



EVEN those who have never made a study of the fleshy 

 fungi must have noticed that while mushrooms seem 

 to revel in bright colors, green is rarely found among 

 them. Indeed, we may go further and sa\^ that the green 

 of ordinary flowering plants is never found in fungi, the 

 presence or absence of this color being considered a prime 

 distinguishing mark. It is the green of common plants 

 that enables them to get the energy from the sun necessary 

 to the assimilation of their food ; but the fungi are 

 saprophytes or parasites; that is, thej^ live on other living 

 or dead plants from which they take the substances 

 already elaborated, and thus do not need the plant green. 



Some species of mushrooms, however, are clearly green 

 in color, but the green is always some other coloring 

 matter than the common plant green. One of the best 

 known of these mushrooms is the one illustrated in our 

 plate and called the green russula. The russulas seem to 

 have a penchant for green, but our species is easily distin- 

 guished from any others of the same color by the fact that 

 the upper surface of the cap is broken up into irregular 

 angular patches b3' the cracking of the skin. The color, 

 ho\vever, even in this greenest of the russulas is not deep 

 and clear but with a gra3ash tinge which Mcllvaine has 

 likened to the color of mouldy cheese. Occasionally too it 

 may have a yellowish tint. 



In youth the cap of the green russula is almost spheri- 

 cal but as it becomes older it expands and finalty the edge 

 may turn upward and the. cap become depressed in the 

 center. In this operation the margin is often cracked and 

 thus offers another mark for its identification. The stem 

 is always verj^ short, often much shorter than the diam- 



