REPORT OF THE STATE BOTANIST I909 69 



Hebeloma velatum Pk. 



VEILED HEBELOMA 



Hebeloma c o 1 v i n i Pk., var. velatum Pk. N. Y. State Mus. 



Rep't48, p. 19 



Pileus convex, plane or slightly centrally depressed, obtuse or 

 umbonate, slightly viscid when moist, glabrous or slightly silky from 

 the veil which may disappear with age or persist and make the 

 margin silky or floccosely scaly or appendiculate with its fragments, 

 chestnut color, reddish gray, pale ochraceous or grayish; lamellae 

 close, ventricose, adnexed, whitish becoming pale cinnamon, whitish 

 and often crenulate on the edge; stem equal, hollow, silky fibrillose ; 

 sometimes floccosely squamulose toward the base, often more or less 

 annulate, the soft cottony whitish or grayish veil rupturing and 

 adhering partly to the stem and partly to the margin of the pileus, 

 whitish; spores subellipsoid, 10-12 x 6-8 /->-. 



Pileus 1.5-6 cm broad; stem 1.5-6 cm long, 4-6 mm thick. 



Gregarious or cespitose. Gravelly soil under cottonwood trees. 

 Clinton co. September. 



This is an extremely variable species and shows how difficult it 

 may be with a limited number of specimens in such cases to locate 

 them correctly. All the forms here included under one name were 

 collected at the same time and place, in a limited area but a few 

 feet in diameter. They are without doubt all one species. Their 

 general appearance suggested such a close relationship to Hebelo- 

 ma c o 1 v i n i Pk. that it was thought best to group them all under 

 that species as a variety distinguished chiefly by its more fully 

 developed veil. If only the form having the veil and annulus in 

 their most highly developed condition had been seen, the species 

 might easily have been referred to the genus Pholiota. Even with 

 those in which only fragmentary vestiges of the veil adhere to the 

 stem its natural place would seem to be in the Subannulata division 

 of the genus Hebeloma. But other forms show no trace of an annulus 

 and compel us to be more conservative in our assignment of this per- 

 plexing species. It is therefore placed where the more abundant 

 forms and less strongly developed or silky fibrillose veil would 

 require it to go. It differs from Hebeloma strophosum 

 Fr. in its great variability, differently colored pileus, radishlike odor 

 and specially in the whitish color of the young lamellae. 



