Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!pyrdc!pyrnj!rutgers!galaxy!rosenblum
From: rosenblum@jupiter.rutgers.edu
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Mushroom identification query
Message-ID: <883@galaxy>
Date: 30 Sep 88 15:22:17 GMT
Sender: news@galaxy
Organization: Rutgers University Graduate Student of Management
Lines: 27


I saw an interesting-looking mushroom (actually, a few of them) on the
New Brunswick campus of Rutgers a few days ago, and I was wondering if
mycologists out there could tell me what it was (or may have been) based
on the casual description that I can give.  It was about 15 cm high,
with a smooth, almost translucent off-white stem.  The cap was curved
downward over the stem (like the straw mushrooms used in Chinese
cooking), with the distance from the top of the cap to its bottom edge
being about 40% of the height of the mushroom.  What was particularly
interesting was the surface of the cap.  The top surface had a rather
striking even shingled pattern, which at a distance looked almost like
a honeycomb, but on closer inspection proved to be just regularly placed
scale-like things with their free edges towards the bottom of the cap;
there were something like six to ten rows of these, with the shingles
in one row between the shingles of the row above (like seats in a well-
designed movie theater).  The bottom of the cap was even more striking:
it was jet black and shiny, and looked like nothing so much as fresh tar,
to some extent obscuring the gills.  Any ideas on what that might have
been?

Daniel M. Rosenblum, assistant professor, quantitative studies,
   Graduate School of Management, Rutgers University

ROSENBLUM@JUPITER.RUTGERS.EDU
ROSENBLUM@ZODIAC.BITnet
ROSENBLUM@CANCER.RUTGERS.EDU \/ CANCER and PISCES are the two nodes
ROSENBLUM@PISCES.RUTGERS.EDU /\ in a VAXcluster called ZODIAC.