Water color illustration of 5 peach/tan-colored mushrooms in various stages of growth. Two smaller mushrooms have darker tan rounded caps, while three larger mushrooms have floral-shaped caps with a purple/pink underside

Agaricus laccatus, Late 1800s

Accession Number: 
NYSM i-556

Mary Banning writes the following text in an elegant, handwritten cursive style underneath her illustration: 

Plate 44

Order Hymenomycetes Tribe Pileati  

Agaricus laccatus Scop.  

Name—lac, a resinous substance produced on trees by the lac insect 

Series Leucospori Subgenus Clitocybe  

Species Characters. A. laccatus. The size & form of this fungus differs greatly from the drawing given on another page under the same name. It has always been an unpretending little Agaric in appearance, but in August 1879 it assumed the most beautiful fantastic shapes. In some of the deeply infundibuliform plant the lamellae were reddish purple, with pilei deep sienna color. The stipes were regular or slightly enlarged at the apex, elastic, fibrous; pileus often pervious. Spores 0.00036. inch. white, echinulate. Hall’s Spring near Baltimore, Maryland, 1879.  

Back To: 
Mary Banning: Fungi of Maryland