Boston Mycological Club
This could easily be confused with an oyster mushroom (Pleurotis ostreatus). Like P. ostreatus, the cap colors can vary from pale cream to grays and dark browns; the gills are very decurrent and the stem can be present, short or so short that it's basically absent; they both grow on dead wood or wood chips (although P. ostreatus is not usually found in the wild growing on wood chips); they both have white spore prints (although P. ostreatus can have a pale grey-lavender or pinkish spore print). H. petaloides has a gelatinous feel to it, when fresh, that P. ostreatus does not; and H. petaloides has very obvious (in a microscope), large, encrusted cystidia that P. ostreatus lacks. H. petaloides is deeply funnel-shaped, the "petaloides" name probably coming from the "petal-shaped" form of the caps.
Bessette - Mushrooms of Northeastern North
America; page 125
Lincoff - Audubon Field Guide to North American
Mushrooms; page 760
Arora - Mushrooms Demystified; page 136
|
| Brought to BMC meeting, 2001-09-10 |