North American species of Mycena.

PSEUDOMYCENA: BASIPEDES

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latter vinaceous brown in iodine, numerous long, pointed, hyaline,
thick-walled setae 150-200 X 8-14, arising from the pellicle; stipe
and bulb covered with flexuous thick-walled setae up to 300 /x long;
stipe readily separable from the pileus.
Habit, habitat, and distribution.-Singly to gregarious on fallen
leaves, needles, or cones; North Carolina, Tennessee, New York,
Michigan, Washington and California in the United States and in
Ontario in Canada. It fruits during the spring and fall, but one
seldom finds it in sufficient quantity to make a herbarium specimen.
However, on one occasion it was found fruiting prolifically on the
northeast slope of Mt. Angeles in the Olympic Mountains of Washington. A carpet of fir needles at an elevation of about 3500 feet was
literally covered with hundreds of the delicate little carpophores.
Material studied.-Smith, 33-537, 33-912, 352, 702, 714, 3782,
4544, 8231, 10770, 10917, 13954, 14650.
Observations.-A hand lens is often necessary to detect the setae
on the pileus. Sometimes they become appressed to the cap and are
visible only when sections are mounted for microscopic study. Such
specimens, which are apparently glabrous, are usually difficult to
place. However, a few setae can nearly always be found around the
bulb. The fungus is so delicate that it is very difficult to get it to the
laboratory in good enough condition to photograph. The cheilocystidia are rather variable, and when they possess a single apical
projection they often appear to be fusoid-ventricose. Here, as in
M. citrinomarginata, a great deal of variation can be found on a single
pileus, and hence the number of projections borne on a cystidium is
not of as much taxonomic significance as was at first supposed. The
bluish-gray colors are not always correlated with the roughened cystidia and should be regarded as simple variation. In water mounts of
fresh material the pellicle does not always appear gelatinous.
As a result of finding the fungus in quantity on Mt. Angeles it
became apparent that M. codoniceps var. aciculata is merely a variation of the species and not deserving of separate designation. In my
first account of the fungus I used the name in the sense of Kiihner
(1926). Kiihner has since decided that the name given by von
Hohnel is a more logical choice because his description is much more
applicable to the fungus. Cooke did not mention a basal bulb on the
stipe of M. codoniceps. Since I am accepting the concept of the
fungus as Kuihner established it, I have also accepted his change in
names.