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Species Information
Summary: Melanoleuca verrucipes is easily recognized by its white to cream cap and white stem with dark scales reminiscent of the scabers on the stem of Leccinum. Other features include white to cream, notched, close gills, growth on buried wood, and microscopic characters including roughened, amyloid spores and "stinging hair" cheilocystidia. The description is derived from Breitenbach(3) except where indicated.
There are collections of Melanoleuca verrucipes from at the University of Washington. There are collections from BC at the University of British Columbia. A collection from OR at Oregon State University was found in a pot of spruce seedlings. It also occurs in Europe (Bon, Courtecuisse, Breitenbach).
Cap: 4-11cm across, convex to bell-shaped when young, soon flat to uplifted with depressed center and sometimes a small umbo, margin sharp and somewhat wavy when old; white to cream, "center sometimes darker to brownish and often faintly yellowish toward the margin"; smooth, dull to dull silky, (Breitenbach), pale ochraceous gray, center more grayish, (Courtecuisse)
Flesh: thin, soft; white; in stem fibrous
Gills: #ERROR!
Stem: 5-7cm x 0.5-1cm, cylindric but base club-shaped, solid to pithy-hollow; "the whole length with small dark gray-brown scales on a whitish background, base often white-tomentose"
Odor: "faintly of bitter almonds or anise when fresh", later fruity and in some fruitbodies reminiscent of cheese rind, (Breitenbach), "fruity, then mealy-earthy", (Bon)
Taste: mild (Bon)
Microscopic spores: spores 7.5-8.8 x 4-5 microns, elliptic, slightly to finely verrucose, iodine positive, colorless, some with droplets; basidia 4-spored, 22-26 x 6-8 microns, cylindric-clavate, without basal clamp connection; pleurocystidia 55-60 x 6-8 microns, "stinging hair" type [more or less cylindric with tapering distal part]; cheilocystidia not seen; cap cuticle of +/- parallel hyphae 2-7 microns wide, a few hyphal ends exserted, occasional hyphae with droplets, colorless, septa without clamp connections, (Breitenbach), spores 11 x 5 microns, +/- reticulate; cystidia nettle-hair type, (Bon)
Spore deposit: cream
Habitat / Range
occasionally single but usually gregarious, in forests or in places where wood is stored and bark is discarded, on buried, rotting wood (always?)., late spring to fall, (Breitenbach), short turf, grassy places, bare ground, (Courtecuisse)
