| | The families of mushrooms and toadstools represented in Britain and Ireland |
Unless indicated otherwise, the following attributes are implicit throughout the descriptions, except where the characters concerned are inapplicable.
Anamorphic forms not known.
Morphology. The fruit-bodies discrete; not sparassidioid (q.v.); gymnocarpic; not noticeably gelatinous when moist; not brightly pigmented; with flesh not beef-steak like (i.e., unlike that of Fistulina). The top of the pileus not patterned with scales. The fruit-bodies not laticiferous; showing no conspicuous colour reaction to cutting or bruising. The hymenium not auto-digesting. The fruit-bodies with no particular odour other than an ordinary fungoid one. Gleba not becoming mucilaginous, not foetid. The stipe not developing cavities. The gills conventional, not obviously suggestive of modified pores or cupules. The edges of the gills not split longitudinally. The basidia ‘unmodified’; not of the ceratobasidialean type (q.v.); 4-sterigmate.
The context hyphae not exhibiting distinctive right-angled branching. Spaerocysts not occurring among the context hyphae.
Chemical reactions. The context hyphae not xanthochroic.
Ecology. Saprophytic. Neither coprophilous nor particularly associated with decaying keratinous materials. Non-marine. The fruit-bodies not subterranean.
We advise against extracting comparative information from the descriptions. This is much more easily achieved using the DELTA data files or the interactive key, which allows access to the character list, illustrations, full and partial descriptions, diagnostic descriptions, differences and similarities between taxa, lists of taxa exhibiting or lacking specified attributes, and distributions of character states within any set of taxa. See also Guidelines for using data taken from Web publications.
Cite this publication as: ‘Watson, L., and Dallwitz, M.J. 2008 onwards. The families of mushrooms and toadstools represented in Britain and Ireland. Version: 5th August 2019. delta-intkey.com’.