North American species of Mycena.

EUMYCENA: OMPHALIARIAE

367

somewhat hygrophanous and fading to ashy whitish or brownish
ashy; flesh thin, watery gray, cartilaginous and tough, odor and taste
strongly farinaceous or rancid-farinaceous when crushed or chewed;
lamellae close to subdistant, 18-26 reach the stipe, two or three tiers
of lamellulae, moderately broad (2-3 mm.), horizontally adnate or
arcuate, soon developing a pronounced decurrent tooth, sometimes
ascending but then with a distinct decurrent tooth, occasionally
separating from the stipe and forming a collar around it, whitish to
grayish, edges even and pallid; stipe 2-5 cm. long, (0.7) 1-2.5 mm.
thick, equal, hollow, terete or compressed, strict or flexuous, cartilaginous and brittle, glabrous or polished, apex at first faintly pruinose, base sparsely strigose, concolorous with the pileus or paler.
Spores 7-9 X 4-5,t, ellipsoid, smooth, amyloid (reaction very
weak in some collections); basidia four-spored, or occasionally twoand four-spored; pleurocystidia not differentiated; cheilocystidia embedded and inconspicuous, 22-36 X 5-11,, nearly filiform, with
numerous contorted branches or protuberances, clavate with fingerlike prolongations scattered over the apex and occasionally on the
pedicel, or capitate and the head furnished with rodlike projections or
crooked fingerlike prolongations; gill trama homogeneous, vinaceous
brown in iodine; pileus trama with a well-differentiated pellicle,
hypoderm differentiated but not very well developed, hyphae 10-20 A
broad, all but the pellicle vinaceous brown in iodine.
Habit, habitat, and distribution.-Gregarious on needles under pine
and Douglas fir; Michigan, Washington, Oregon, and California. It
usually fruits during the fall months, but was collected in the Olympic
Mountains of Washington in June, 1939. To judge from my own
experience, it is not common. It would not be at all surprising,
however, to find it very abundant occasionally.
Material studied.-Smith, 3918, 6161, 7933, 8018, 8920, 8924, 9091,
14624, 18145, 18224. Mains, 34-179, September 14, 1935.
Observations.-This species is quite easily recognizable if one finds
typical specimens and does not allow the rather decurrent gills of the
older pilei to mislead him. The exceptionally strong and rancidfarinaceous odor and taste allow it to be readily distinguished from
other fragile gray Mycenae. The consistency is a bit more cartilaginous than usual for fungi of this type, and in this character it
approaches M. pusilla. The stature is rather variable. One frequently finds what I consider to be off-season forms, which are small
and quite unlike the usual form in stature. In Hygrophorus such