North American species of Mycena.

276 NORTH AMERICAN SPECIES OF MYCENA

fading slowly; flesh watery gray, thin, fragile, taste mild, odor slight,
subfarinaceous, and hardly distinctive; lamellae adnate, developing
a slight tooth, close to subdistant, 15-18 reach the stipe, narrow, 2.5
mm. broad, whitish to pallid or grayish and with pallid even edges,
intervenose; stipe (2) 4-6 (8) cm. long, 1.5-2 mm. thick, equal or the
base slightly inflated, fragile, tubular, usually strict, at first covered
with a hoary bloom but soon naked and polished and somewhat translucent, the base white-strigose, at first dark bluish gray but soon
fading to "drab" or sordid grayish brown below, apex pallid.
Spores ellipsoid, pointed at one end, 6-8 X 3.5-5 u or 7-9 X 4-5 A,
amyloid but the reaction very weak; basidia four-spored, 26-28 X
5-7,; cheilocystidia cylindric to clavate with obtuse short rodlike
projections over the enlarged portion, at times the projections elongated and branched into contorted filamentous processes, (18) 21-27
(30) X 5-9 (11) Au; pleurocystidia not differentiated; gill trama sordid
vinaceous brown in iodine, pileus trama with a thin surface pellicle,
which becomes yellow in iodine, beneath it a region of enlarged cells
appearing somewhat cellular in tangential section, the remainder of
loosely interwoven hyphae, all tissue beneath the pellicle vinaceous
brown in iodine.
Habit, habitat, and distribution.-Gregarious or in troops of hundreds of fruiting bodies on needle beds under spruce and more rarely
under Douglas fir; Washington, Oregon, and California. It was
particularly abundant around Lake Tahkenitch, Oregon, after a
period of cold weather in November, 1935. It has been found in
Michigan also.
Material studied. -Smith, 32-600, 3324, 3442, 3543, 3548, 8030,
8740, 8814, 9070, 17066. Mains, September 4, 1934, Michigan.
Observations.-After observing a large number of specimens, one
realizes that the colors and color changes are quite distinctive, even
though they are very difficult to match in a color chart or to describe
clearly in common terms. When one pulls the fruiting bodies from
their attachment among the needles, the base of the stipe does not
snap off, as it does in M. plicosa. It can, of course, be broken off if
carelessly picked; the distinctive point is that in M. plicosa, no matter
how careful one is, it is almost impossible to pull the stipe from its
substratum without breaking it. I have never seen reddish stains on
specimens of M. piceicola. The rather small cheilocystidia, with
their frequently contorted projections, also distinguish it from such
of its relatives as M. metata, M. hudsoniana, and M. subplicosa. It is