962 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



Still the relationship i^ so close between this variety and the 

 true fly amaiiita that I would not advise any one to experiment 

 with it as food. 



Tricholoma peckii Howe 



This species agrees very closely with the description given by 

 Fries of Armillaria aurantia, from which it scarcely 

 differs except in the character of the ornamentation of the 

 stem and in the absence of any semblance or form of an annulus. 

 In our plant the scales of the stem are very small and not 

 verrucose nor concentrically arranged as indicated by the 

 Friesian description and figure of A. aurantia in loones 

 Hymenomycetum. Fries himself says that there is no distinct 

 annulus present in A. aurantia, but the scales of the stem 

 definitely and concentrically ceasing 2-3 lines from the top of 

 the stem afford an annular zone. It seems strange that on 

 such slight evidence as this he should place the species in the 

 genus Armillaria while its alliance with the genus Tricholoma 

 is much more strongly indicated by other characters. In our 

 plant there is a slight downy pruinosity on the margin of the 

 pileus in the young state, which is good evidence of its relation- 

 ship to the genus Tricholoma, but it is possible that this char- 

 acter is not present in the European plant, for I find no men- 

 tion made of it in the descriptions of A. aurantia. The 

 viscid pileus and the change of color assumed by the lamellae 

 with advancing age in our plant point so clearly to an intimate 

 alliance with such species as T. flavobrunneum, T.. 

 a 1 b o b r u n n e u m , T. u s t a 1 i s , and T. s t a n s , that 

 stronger evidence than any we have yet seen in it would be 

 necessary to induce us to disregard this alliance and place it 

 in Armillaria. It is perhaps worthy of note that while desig- 

 nating the European plant, which he considers the same as the 

 Agaric us aurantius of Schaeffer, as an Armillaria, 

 Fries, in the work already mentioned, has actually placed both 

 the description and the figure of it among the descriptions 

 and figures of species of the genus Tricholoma, and he himself 

 says that the species is ambiguous between Armillaria and. 



