Part 24

~Lentinellus cochleatus~ (Fries) Karsten forms irregular lobed and twisted, flattened or funnel-shaped dirty brownish caps with a fragrant smell, toothed gill-edges and almost spherical, small, hyaline spores measuring 5 × 4 µm which become bluish grey in iodine solutions.

Lentinellus apparently has very close affinities to Auriscalpium, ‘the Ear pick fungus’, (p. 158) both in the structure of the spores and the anatomy of the fruit-body.

~Lentinus lepideus~ (Fries) Fries forms very tough fruit-bodies with convex or flattened, pale yellowish caps and stems ornamented with dark tawny or brown scales. The stem is often eccentric and buried in cracks or soft rotten wood on which it grows; the spores are non-amyloid. It grows on pine stumps but also on decaying or unprotected railway sleepers and wooden paving blocks, joists, etc., made of conifer wood. When the fungus fruits in a darkened environment, such as a cellar, the mushroom-like fruit-bodies are not produced but are replaced by slender branched structures similar to the ‘Stag’s horn’ or ‘Candle-snuff fungus’ (p. 206), or to certain of the Fairy Club fungi (p. 172). Similar growths have been recorded for Polyporus squamosus which grows on hard wood timber and is described in detail later (p. 140).

~Crepidotus mollis~ (Fries) Kummer

Soft slipper toadstool

Cap: up to 45 mm across and in tiers, sessile, shell-shaped or kidney-shaped, smooth, rubbery and brownish ochre in colour.

Gills: pale buff then cinnamon-brown and finally flushed snuff-brown, thin and crowded.

Flesh: watery, gelatinous beneath the skin of the cap and whitish buff.

Spore-print: warm brown.

Spores: ellipsoid, smooth, medium-sized, pale buff under the microscope and 8-9 × 5-5·5 µm in size.

Easily recognised by the soft elastic cap which can be stretched without breaking, the brown gills and pale buff spores. (See Plate 49, p. 153.)

Illustrations: LH 177; NB 145³; WD 69¹.

The artificiality of classifying all those agarics with both a spoon-shaped or bracket-shaped fruit-body, and a reduced (or lacking) stem is further exemplified by the presence of similar genera in other groups of fungi. For instance Claudopus is typified by pink, angular spores (Plate 28) and Clitopilus is characterised by longitudinally ridged spores, i.e. they are not angular in all optical sections but only when seen end on (see p. 101). An example of the former is C. parasiticus (Quélet) Ricken which grows on dead remains of woody fungi, and of the latter C. passackerianus (Pilát) Singer which may invade mushroom beds. Both species are quite small though the last fungus is similarly coloured to the more familiar Clitopilus prunulus (Fries) Kummer, ‘The Miller’, so common in woods and fields.

Thus in the British Isles agarics with eccentric stems may be found, in the white, brown and pink-spored groups--and in the tropics and subtropics the picture is completed by the existence of the genus Melanotus in the black-spored agarics. M. bambusinus Pat. grows on bamboos and M. musae (Berk. & Curt.) Singer grows on dead leaves and debris of bananas; the latter is also a probable agent in the decay of fibres in the tropics.

(d) Saprophytes--terrestrial agarics

~Melanoleuca melaleuca~ (Fries) Murrill

Cap: width 40-110 mm. Stem: width 50-80 mm; length 50-90 mm.

Description:

Cap: dark brown, umber or vandyke when moist, hygrophanous and becoming very much paler on drying almost tan, convex then flattened sometimes umbonate, smooth or wrinkled.

Stem: white or whitish covered in brownish fibrils which increase in number with age or after handling; solid, rather elastic and slightly swollen towards the base.

Gills: white, broad, crowded and as if cut out from behind before joining the stem.

Flesh: with pleasant smell, soft, white, becoming brownish with age, particularly in the stem.

Spore-print: very pale ivory-colour.

Spores: medium-sized, ellipsoid, hyaline under the microscope and roughened by distinct dots which become blue-black when mounted in solutions containing iodine, 8 × 4-5 µm.

Marginal cystidia: spear- or sword-shaped, roughened with crystals at the top and appearing as if barbed like fish-spines.

Facial cystidia: numerous and similar to marginal cystidia.

Habitat & Distribution: Common in autumn in woods; also found in pastures.

General Information: A very common fungus which is rather confusing to the beginner because of its variation in colour, brought about by the change in colour with change in content of water. However, this fungus can be easily recognised by the unusually ornamented cystidia found on the gill-faces and gill-margins. This character and the fact that the spores possess amyloid ornamentation define in part the genus Melanoleuca. In many books this common fungus is found under the genus Tricholoma; however, members of this latter genus have neither amyloid ornamented spores nor barbed cystidia.