Part 48

Amanitopsis vaginata Roze. Edible.

This species is very common in pine and oak forests. The plant, as a whole, has a graceful aspect and grows singly or scattered through open places in the woods. It is somewhat fragile and easily broken. The cap in this species is usually a mouse-gray, sometimes slaty gray or brownish, generally umbonate in the center and distinctly striated on the margin.

The stem is white, equal, and slender in proportion to the width of the cap, and sheathed quite far up with a loose white membranous wrapper. This sheath is so slightly attached to the base of the stem that it is often left in the ground if the plant is carelessly pulled. The gills are white, or whitish, free from the stem and rounded at the outer extremity.

There is a white variety, (variety alba) A. nivalis, in which the whole plant is white, and a tawny variety (A. fulva Schaeff.) in which the cap is a pale ochraceous yellow, with the gills and stem white or whitish. In the variety A. livida or A. spadicea Grev. the cap is brown, while the stem and gills are tinged a smoky brown.

These are all edible and of fairly good flavor. Except in the absence of the ring upon the stem, the light varieties might be mistaken for small forms of the poisonous species Amanita verna or of phalloides. Great caution should therefore be observed, in gathering for the table, to be sure of the species.

PLATE XV.

Figs. 1 to 7.--=Ag. (Amanita) muscarius= Linn. (=Amanita muscaria=). "Fly Mushroom," "False Orange."

POISONOUS.

Cap warty, margin striate; gills white, reaching the stem, and often forming decurrent lines upon it; stem white, stuffed, annulate, bulbous at the base, concentrically ridged or scaly at the base, and sometimes part way up, with fragments of the ruptured wrapper. Spores widely elliptical, white, .0003 to .0004 of an inch in length.

The plants of this species vary very much in size and in the color of the cap. The latter is sometimes a bright scarlet and again it is orange color, more frequently ochraceous yellow, fading to a very pale yellow tint. In the variety albus it is white. The stem is stuffed with webby fibrils and varies very much in thickness: sometimes in young specimens it is very stout, with a thick ovate bulb reaching well up towards the cap, and again it is comparatively slender and nearly equal from the cap down to a very slight bulb at the base. The very young plant is completely enveloped in a white or yellowish egg-shaped wrapper or volva, which, being friable, generally breaks up into scales, forming warts upon the upper surface of the cap. When the plant is young and moist the cap is slightly sticky. A thickish white veil extends from the stem to the inner margin of the cap. This breaks away with the growth and expansion of the plant and falls in lax folds, forming a deflexed ring round the upper portion of the stem.

This mushroom is very common in woods and forests in summer and autumn, and has a wide geographical range. It is recorded by all mycologists as poisonous. One author states that when eaten in very small quantities it acts as a cathartic, but that it causes death when eaten freely. Flies find in it a deadly poison, and the poisonous alkaloids are not destroyed by drying.

Although cases are cited where this mushroom has been eaten without injury, its fatally poisonous effects have been too well and too often tested to allow of any doubt as to the danger of eating it, even in small quantities.

Amanita Frostiana, Frost's Amanita, is a much smaller species than A. muscaria. It bears a very close resemblance to the Fly Amanita, and might easily be taken for a small form of the same. The cap is yellowish and warted, and specimens occur in which the stem and gills are slightly tinged with yellow. It is poisonous.

PLATE XV.

FIG. 8.--=Ag. (Amanita) phalloides= Fries (=Amanita phalloides=) =A. vernalis= Bolt., =A. verrucosus= Curtis. "Poisonous Amanita," "Death Cup."

POISONOUS.

Cap bell-shaped or ovate at first, then expanded, smooth, obtuse, viscid, margin even, creamy-white, brown, or greenish, without warts; flesh white; stem white, hollow or stuffed, bulbous at the base, annulate; gills rounded and ventricose, coarse, and persistently white, free from the stem; volva conspicuous, large, loose, adhering to the base, but free from the stem at the top, with the margin irregularly notched. In the white forms there is frequently a greenish or yellow tinge at the disk or centre of the cap. The white form is most common, but the brownish is often found in this country. I have not yet found the green-capped variety sometimes figured in European works. In the brown variety the stem and ring are often tinged with brown, as also the volva. The cap is usually from 2 to 3 inches broad, and the stem from 3 to 5 inches long. The whole plant is symmetrical in shape and clean looking, though somewhat clammy to the touch when moist. It is very common in mixed woods, in some localities, and is universally considered as fatally poisonous.

The white form of A. phalloides, although in reality bearing very little resemblance to the common field mushroom, has been mistaken for it as also for the Smooth white lepiota, and in some instances has been eaten with fatal results by those who gathered it.

The distinction between this most poisonous Amanita and the common field mushroom is well marked. In the common mushroom the gills are pink, becoming dark brown, the spores purplish brown, and the whole mushroom is stout and short stemmed, the stem being shorter than the diameter of the cap, and having no volva, or wrapper at its base. In the species A. phalloides the gills are persistently white and the bulb is distinct and broad at the base, the white cup-shaped wrapper sheathing the base of the stem like the calyx of a flower. The Smooth white lepiota shows neither volva nor trace of one, and has other distinct characteristics which distinguish it from A. phalloides. See page 14, No. 4 of this series.

The specimen figured in Plate XV grew in Maryland, where it is quite common.

PLATE XV.

FIG. 9.--=Ag. (Amanita) mappa (Amanita mappa)= Linn., =Amanita citrina=, =A. virosa.=

POISONOUS.

Cap at first convex, then expanded, dry, without a separable cuticle, not warty but showing white, yellowish, or brownish scales or patches on its upper surface; gills white, adnexed; flesh white, sometimes slightly yellowish under the skin; stem stuffed, then hollow, cylindrical, yellowish white, nearly smooth, with a distinctly bulbous base; volva white or brownish. Odor pleasant. Spores spheroidal. The cap in this species is somewhat variable in color, but those having a white cap are most common. The plant is not so tall as those of the species phalloides. It is solitary in habit, and is found usually in open woods.

Curtis and Lowerby figure mappa and phalloides under the same name.

PLATE XVI.

FIGS. 1 to 4.--=Ag. (Amanita) vernus= Bull. =(Amanita verna)= Linn., =Amanita bulbosa=, =Ag. solitarius.= "Vernal Mushroom," "Spring Mushroom," etc.

POISONOUS.