The North American species of Pholiota, by Alexander H. Smith and L. R. Hesler.

Smith * Hesler

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Kiihner and Romagnesi (1953) write: "dans la chair, au moins a la
ligne cornee (ou l'on voit au microscope de grosses masses jaune-verte
intercellulaires, qui manquent chez la precedente"... (meaning Dryophila lubrica). We have not seen such pigment masses in the course of
our study, indicating that very likely the French authors have still another variant. Pilat (1932) gives the spores as 7-8.5 x 4.5-5.5 p. These
are wider in relation to length than in any of the American variants
grouped here.
The following is a description of fresh material which appears to
belong in this species.
Pileus 3-8 cm broad, convex with an incurved margin, expanding to
plane with the margin usually remaining decurved, surface slimy-viscid,
at first obscurely spotted with agglutinated veil particles but these soon
obliterated, color pale dull tawny, with the margin pale yellow, or at
times "tawny" on disc and "warm-buff" on margin, water-soaked margin
olivaceous in age, margin fringed at first from fibrils of yellow veil.
Context pale yellow with a watery green line above the gills, taste mild,
odor faint but reminding one of freshly husked green corn, with FeSO4
olivaceous.
Lamellae pale yellow when young, pale dull cinnamon when mature,
more or less subdistant at maturity, broad, adnexed-seceding, becoming
ventricose near the stipe.
Stipe 5-11 cm long, 9-17 mm at apex, slightly enlarged downward.
yellow over all when young, soon olive-bro-wn to very dingy rusty brown
from the base up, thinly fibrillose from the yellow veil but the fibrils
discoloring over lower part of stipe, apex silky to fibrillose, no distinct
veil-line left at maturity.
Spores in deposit dull rusty brown, 7-9 X 4-5 A/, smooth, with a
small but distinct apical germ pore; shape elliptic to ovate in face view,
in profile slightly bean-shaped to obscurely inequilateral; color in KOH
dull cinnamon, not much different in Melzer's reagent, wall about 0.3,t
thick.
Basidia 15-26 x 5-6 (7) At, 4-spored, clavate, hyaline in KOH. Pleurocystidia 55-75 (80) x 9-18 /l, fusoid-ventricose, content dull yellow in
KOH as revived from a colloidal material in the neck, walls thin and
smooth. Cheilocystidia similar to pleurocystidia but with less of a neck,
often tapered from ventricose part to the obtuse apex, walls smooth, thin;
content ochraceous in KOH. Caulocystidia 50-120 x 10-18 pu, fusoidventricose to clavate, often with a secondary cross wall near tle base,
thin-walled and hyaline in KOH, scattered.
Gill trama with a central area of parallel hyphae the cells of which
finally inflate to about 15 /L, walls brownish to hyaline, smooth or nearly
so; subhymenium a poorly defined gelatinous to subgelatinous layer.
Pileus cutis of narrow gelatinous hyphae 2-3 u/ diam., hyaline to ochraceous in KOH, loosely tangled, hypodermium a compactly interwoven