Beech Rooter

Appearance

Cap: 1.5-12 cm; bell-shaped or occasionally convex when young, becoming broadly convex to broadly bell-shaped or nearly flat in age; bald; smooth or, more often, moderately to prominently radially wrinkled and puckered (over the center when young and later nearly overall); sticky to greasy when fresh; dark brown to grayish brown or yellow-brown, but not infrequently fading to brownish or buff; the margin incurved when young, sometimes uplifted in maturity, not lined.

Gills: Broadly attached to the stem, or notched at the point of attachment, with a tiny tooth that runs down the stem; close or almost distant; white to creamy; thick; short-gills frequent.

Stem: 4-16 cm long above ground; 0.5-2 cm thick; typically club-shaped when young and, later, tapering a little to apex; white and nearly bald near the apex (or, rarely, overall); brownish gray to brownish or brown and fibrillose to hairy below, with the brown areas often stretched into snakeskin or chevron patterns by maturity; with a long, tapered tap root extending up to 10 cm underground; the tap root sometimes bruising rusty brown.

Flesh: Whitish; unchanging when sliced.

Odor and Taste: Not distinctive.

Naming

Syn:
Hymenopellis furfuracea

Distribution

East of the Rocky Mountains

Habitat

Saprobic on the deadwood of hardwoods; occasionally growing directly from very well decayed logs and stumps, but more commonly attached to buried deadwood near stumps, appearing terrestrial; late spring through fall