Black-spored Series 
GENUS COPRINUS 
Ink Caps (Edible) 
The genus Coprinus may be readily recognised from the 
fact that the spore-bearing plates dissolve to an inky fluid soon 
after the spores mature. 
An amateur mushroom hunter may feel perfectly safe in col- 
lecting ink caps for his table, as all the species large enough to 
tempt the collector are not only edible, but are generally conceded 
to be of the best. 
Their general appearance is such that even the most un* 
trained observer should not mistake them for species of other 
groups. 
The oblong or nearly cylindrical cap, which does not expand 
until ready to dissolve in inky drops, is too striking a character- 
istic to permit of any one making a mistake in identifying it as 
a specimen safe to eat. 
These plants literally grow up in a night and perish in a 
day, as their period of growth is spent underground, and it is 
not until all the parts of the fruiting portions of the plants are 
fully developed that they push themselves above ground. Then 
they push and crowd from the ground in such numbers, where 
but a few hours before no evidence of them was seen, that each 
one is compressed from its cylindrical form to that of a many- 
sided prism, so that there would be no chance for the expansion 
of those within the group if it were not, that those on the outer 
rim so rapidly expand and dissolve away. 
Specimens to be eaten should be gathered in the young 
stage and should be cooked promptly; for though not poisonous 
in the black stage, they are surely not attractive. 
Shelley must have had the ink caps in mind when he wrote 
of the fungi in the garden of ‘‘ The Sensitive Plant”: 
‘Their mass rotted off them flake by flake, 
Till the thick stalk stuck like a murderer’s stake, 
Where rags of loose flesh yet tremble on high, 
Infecting the winds that wander by.” 
Co-pri’-niis 
89 
