Oclirosporee 

 pip-shaped, 9X7/A Cooke. Cortinarius. 



A very common and prolific species in West Virginia, New Jersey, 

 Pennsylvania, North Carolina. Mcllvaine. 



Pushing from the earth in great clusters it raises the mat of leaves 

 above it into hut-like mounds through which it seldom bursts. Yet side 

 openings to its huts show its coziness, and reveal the ground thickly 

 dusted with its spores. Detecting these mounds is part of the wood- 

 craft of a toad-stool hunter. 



Where clusters are not dense, or the fungus is solitary, the stem is 

 frequently swollen at the base, even bulbous. 



Both caps and stems are edible, but the stems are not equal to the 

 caps. It is a valuable food species, because of its lateness and quantity. 

 It is not of best quality. 



C. tur'malis Fr. turma, a troop. (Plate LXXXII, fig. 4, p. 306.) 

 PileilS yellow-tan, most frequently darker at the disk, not changeable, 

 compact, convex then plane, very obtuse, even, smooth (sometimes 

 obsoletely piloso-virgate), when young veiled with pruinate but very 

 fugacious villous down, soon naked, viscid. Flesh white. Stem some- 

 times 3 in., sometimes 6 in. long, i in. thick, solid, very hard, rigid, 

 cylindrical, here and there attenuated at the base, shining white when 

 dry, when young sheatJied with a white woolly veil, naked when full 

 grown. Cortina entirely fibrillose, superior and persistent in the form 

 of a ring, at length ferruginous with the spores. Gills variously adnexed, 

 rounded or emarginate, even decurrent with a tooth, crowded, serrated, 

 white then clay-color. Fries. 



I find it edible and of great value, being plentiful in pine woods, 

 Maryland. I have collected a bushel in less than an hour in October. 

 Under pine needles forming mounds. Taylor. 



The localities and the habit of C. turmalis are very like that of C. 

 sebaceus. The leaf mat broods the clusters. 



C. turmalis is on a par with C. sebaceus. Personally I prefer the 

 latter, 



** Gills purplish, then clay-colored. 



C. va'rillS (Schaeff. ) Fr. -varius, changeable. PileilS 2 in. and more 

 broad, \x\%\tf.ferruginous-tawny, compact, hemispherico-flattened, very 



309 



