branous or tomentose wrapper, which is ruptured by the growth 
of the plant. In some species the remains of the ruptured 
wrapper or volva form a kind of cup or sheath about the base of 
the stem of the extruded plant; in others a part of the wrapper is 
carried up:on the surface of the cap, and remains on it in small 
irregular patches, or in the shape of numerous small warts or 
prominences, which are easily separable from it. It thus some- 
times happens that the warts are washed off by heavy rains. The 
cap is regular, convex or quite flat when mature, and often a 
little sticky when moist. The gills are free from the stem, and 
the stem is furnished with a collar. 
Inasmuch as some of the most dangerously poisonous species 
known belong to this genus, it is very important that the specific 
characters of the edible ones should be clearly understood by 
those, who would use them for food. Mistakes here are attended 
with too much risk to be lightly made. And yet some of our 
best mushrooms belong to this genus, and it is therefore unwise 
to deprive ourselves of their use through lack of confidence in 
our ability to recognize a good thing when we see it. 
The Orange Amanita or Orange mushroom, Amanita caesarea, 
is a large and attractive species. Its cap is at first commonly 
bright-red or brownish-red, but with advancing age it fades to 
yellow on the margin, and sometimes becomes entirely yellow. 
The margin even in the 
young plant, is marked by 
distinct impressed parallel, 
radiating lines or striations. 
The flesh is white, tinged 
with yellow just beneath 
the separable epidermis, 
and also close to the gills. 
The gills are yellow, a very 
good mark of distinction in 
ib * this species. The spores, 
Amanita cesarea, A.rubescens. A. virginata* however, are white. . The 
stem is also yellow, as well 
as iis collar, but the distinctly membranous wrapper at its base is 
white. The stem is either stuffed with a soft cottony pith or 
hoilow. The expanded cap is 3 to 6 inches or more broad, and 
the stem 4 to 6 inches long and 4 inch or more thick. The plant 
grows in woods and groves, or their borders, and may be found 
during warm, showery weather from July to September. Some- 
times it grows in ares of large circles. 
42 
