Leucosporae 



Young specimens are quite as edible as A. mellea, and rather more 

 juicy. 



' II. CLITOCYB^E. Gills not sinuate, etc. 



A. mel'lea Vahl. melleus, of the color of honey. (Plate XVI, fig. i, 

 p. 52.) PileilS adorned with minute tufts of brown or blackish hairs, 

 sometimes glabrous, even or when old slightly striate on the margin. 

 Gills adnate or slightly decurrent, white or whitish, becoming sordid 

 with age and sometimes variegated with reddish-brown spots. Stem 

 ringed, at length brownish toward the base. Spores elliptical, white, 

 8-io/n long. Peck, 48th Rep. N. Y. State Bot. 



Spores 9x5-6;* W.G.S.; iox8/* B.; 8-io/u, Peck. 



The A. mellea is unusually prolific and is common over the United 

 States and Europe. Specimens may be found in the spring-time, but 

 in middle latitudes it is common from August until after light frosts. It 

 is usually in tufts, some of which contain scores of plants and are showy 

 over ground filled with roots, or on stumps or boles of decaying trees. 

 It frequents dense woods and open clearings. I have seen acres of dense 

 woodland at Mt. Gretna, Pa., so covered with it and its varieties that 

 but few square yards were unoccupied. 



A description of the typical A. mellea will rarely apply to any one 

 plant. A combination of its variable features in one description would 

 include something of nearly every white-spored Agaric under the sun. 

 Yet there is something indescribable about it which once learned will 

 unerringly betray it. 



Its Caps vary from perfectly smooth, through tufts of scales and hairs, 

 more or less dense, to matted woolliness. It may show any one of these 

 conditions in youth and be bald in age. Some shade of yellow is the 

 prevailing color, but this will vary from whitish to dark-purplish or 

 reddish-brown. When water-soaked it is one color, when dry, another. 

 Commonly the margins of the Caps are striated, sometimes they are 

 smooth as a cymbal, and not unlike one, have a raised place or umbo 

 in the center. Flesh white or whitish. Gills when young are white or 

 creamy, usually running down the stem, sometimes slightly notched at 

 attachment. They freckle in age and lose their fair complexion. The 

 Veil or collar about the stem is as variable as fashion thick and closely 

 woven or flimsy as gossamer, or vanishing as the plant grows old. The 



55 



