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

168

The North American Species of Pholiota

viscid, color pale yellow-brown drying dull ochraceous, at first with minute
squamules but becoming glabrous, margin slightly fringed at first.
Lamellae broad, thin, close, adnate-seceding, yellowish and drying
yellowish, rather glaucous when fresh, edges minutely fimbriate.
Stipe 4-6 cm long, 3-8 mm thick, equal to contorted, some inflated
at apex, dingy yellowish, fibrillose from remains of thin veil, as dried
with yellow mycelium binding dirt at base.
Spores 5-6 x 4-4.5 up (7-8.5 x 4.5-5.5 p), elliptic to ovate in face
view, elliptic to obscurely inequilateral in profile; apical pore very inconspicuous; walls relatively thin; color in KOH dingy ochraceous to
pale ochraceous tawny, pale tawny in Melzer's reagent.
Basidia 4-spored, 18-23 x 5-6 pu, subcylindric with a broad central
constriction when sporulating, hyaline in KOH and in Melzer's reagent.
Pleurocystidia 25-36 x 5-11(14) p. as chrysocystidia buried in the
hymenium, ventricose-apiculate to fusoid-ventricose. Cheilocystidia 24-46
x 7-9 pu, resembling those of P. erinaceella but smaller, (capitate and
narrowed irregularly to base), yellow in KOH from a homogeneous
content, smooth, thin-walled. Caulocystidia 28-42 x 6-10 /t, clavate,
fusoid-ventricose, or with a short apical projection, content homogeneous
to coagulated and ochraceous as revived in KOH, walls thin and ochraceous in KOH, smooth.
Gill trama subparallel, of smooth non-gelatinous hyphae with very
wide cells (some 20 p. or more), walls ochraceous and somewhat refractive in KOH, thin but visible as 2 lines each about 0.25 up thick; subhymenium of gelatinous narrow hyphae, gelatinization extending to base
of basidium. Pileus trama with a gelatinous cutis of encrusted yellowish
hyphae 3-5 pL diam., which became rusty brown as they collapsed; hypodermium of wide rusty-brown encrusted hyphae 4-12 pt diam. Context
hyphae very wide (20 pu in many), with smooth refractive walls most
seen to be double in optical section. All hyphae inamyloid. Clamp connections present.
HABIT, HABITAT, AND DISTRIBUTION: Gregarious on soil in an old
grassy road in a woods, Cleveland, Ohio, Oct. 14, 1948. Maurice B. Walters
169, type.
OBSERVATIONS: This species combines the gelatinous subhymenium
with cheilocystidia of the P. erinaceella type and a viscid pileus. The
basidiocarps remind one of a dingy P. spumosa. The pleurocystidia are
easily overlooked. The cheilocystidia separate it at once from P. prolixa
and P. californica.
85. Pholiota californica (Earle) comb. nov.
Flammula californica Earle, New York Bot. Gard. Bull. 2: 342. 1902.
Gymnopilus californicus (Earle) Murrill, Mycologia 4: 253. 1912.
Illustrations: Text figs. 121-122.

Pileus 4-7 cm broad, expanded, subumbonate, gregarious or caespi