The exterior color of the puffball, edible (Lycoptidon eyathiforme Lose) is brown (Figs. 7 and S), and the outer most part of the covering is usually more or less distinctly and irregularly checked, the white color of the interior showing between the darker, raised areas. Within at its earliest stage the flesh is of a milk white color, solid, and without an appre ciable juice. Within two or three days it becomes soft, turns yellowish, develops a watery and later an amber-colored juice, and continues its development through later stages.
In the left-hand specimen of Fig. 0 the entire contents have changed from yellow to brown, the juice has dried out, the outer coatings on the upper part have been broken up and blown away, show ing only in brown and gray at the lower edge of the specimen, and the interior mass of dust-like spores and fluffy, mi nute brown threads exposed to the air.
Other species of puffball grow- in the District of Columbia, but only two others, so far as known, approach this in size. The small species are commonly an inch or less in diameter, while the commoner of the two large species has an almost pure white surface, and when old the spores it produces, like those of the other large one, are yellowish brown instead of purplish brown as in the present species. None of the puffballs with a pure white interior are known to be poisonous.
About Washington puffballs are found commonly in the autumn on lawns and in pastures, especially upon the vacant lots at the edge of the city serving as "commons," where the soil has remained undisturbed for many years and has been closely grazed by cattle. F. V. Coville (Circ. No. 13, Division of Botany, U. S. Dept. of Agriculture, '9S).
[If there is any suspicion through lack of confidence in the dealer, etc., that the mushrooms on hand might be toxic, the following process, used by market-women in Washington, according to Mr. Coville, can be employed before they are prepared for food. The stem is scraped, the gills are removed, and the upper part of the cap is peeled. The mushrooms are then boiled in salt and water—which removes any toxalbumin that may be present,— then steeped in vinegar—which removes the alkaloid. En.] Poisonous Mushrooms.—The toxic ef fects of mushrooms are mainly due to two alkaloids: muscarine,—formed by the oxidation of choline in the A,qaricus muscarius,— and phalline, contained especially in the Amanita phalloides.
Phalline is a toxalbumin of extreme violence, and is a poison also found in some venomous animals, such as the rattlesnake. In both species of mush rooms, however, there are other chem ical substances whose nature have not as yet been determined.
The fly-amanita, poisonous (Amanita musearia), is the commonest of the poisonous mushrooms of the District of Columbia. The points especially to be
noted are the bulbous enlargement at the base of the stem, breaking into thick scales above, the very broad drooping ring near the top of the stem, and the corky particles loosely attached to the smooth, glossy, upper surface of the cap. The stem, the gills, and the spores are white, the corky particles commonly of a buff color, but varying sometimes to almost white. The glossy, upper surface of the cap, beneath the corky particles, varies from a brilliant red to orange yellow, and even white. Commonly in the vicinity of Washington the coloration is orange in the centre, shading to yellow toward the margin. Brilliant-red ones arc rarely seen here, but white ones are of not infrequent occurrence, especially late in the season. It sometimes happens that the corky layer does not break up into particles, but simply stretches as the cap expands. Such a specimen, if it is of a pale-buff or white color, would not be taken by a novice as belonging to the same species as the brilliant-orange or red specimens, and a mistake might easily be made. Often, too, the bulbous scaly base is broken off in picking and even that characteristic is lost. Another feature usually present in the fly-amanita is the striations on the upper side of the cap near the margin.
This is one of the largest, handsomest, and most dangerous of our mushrooms.
It is abundant about Washington in the fall, growing in pine-woods, a favorite situation in these woods being the vicinity of abandoned hog-beds. F. V. Coville (Circ. No. 13, Division of Botany, U. S. Dept. of Agriculture, 'PS).
The stem of the death-cup, poisonous (A ma nita phalloides), is set in a sort of white cup, the upper portion of which surrounds the base of the stem like a col lar. This species resembles muscaria in its broad ring and in the white color of its stem, gills, and spores. The upper sur face of the cap, however, is usually smooth and without corky particles, glossy, viscid, and of a white or slightly greenish, sometimes even yellow, color. Occasionally a few small and irregular patches arc found on the top of the cap, consisting of fragments of the upper por tion of the cup, which became attached to the top of the mushroom when it was very young and just pushing itself out of the ground. The presence of the cup which this species possesses, in common with other supposedly poisonous, is espe cially characteristic. It is usually situ ated well beneath the surface of the ground and should be carefully dug out when one is securing specimens for iden tification. Specimens occur, however, in which the inner surface of the cup is at tached throughout to the stem, so that it presents the appearance, not of a cup, but of a mere bulbous base.