Dark-Spored Agarics—I

Abstract

In MYCOLOGIA for January and March, I918, a series of eight articles on the gill-fungi of tropical North America was concluded with a treatment of species having brown, purplish-brown, or black spores. On page 15 in the January number of that year the fourteen genera of the subtribe Agaricanae were keyed out, beginning with the sessile Melanotus and ending with Coprinus and Clarkeinda, in which the characters are more complex. The present series of articles will deal with species occurring in temperate North America, except those confined to the Pacific Coast, which have already been considered for the most part in articles published in MYCOLOGIA some years ago. The key to the genera need not be repeated here. I shall, for convenience, begin with the larger, more fleshy species and take up the small, slenderstemmed ones later, reversing the natural order. The three genera of the present article may be distinguished from others of the subtribe by a fleshy or fibrous stem, gills that do not deliquesce, and little or no veil, which does not form a definite ring on the stem. They may be separated from each other by the following key: