Reviews

Drawing on long experience and numerous, well annotated collections Dr. A. H. Smith and Dr. L. R. Hesler have published another monograph on a group of North American agarics, viz. the genus Pholiota in a very wide sense, including Flammula, Kuehneromyces, Pachylepyrium, Phaeolepiota, some species of Hypholoma and a large part of Phaeomarasmius. The general chapters in the first 36 pages deal with the history of the genus, the new classification proposed by the authors, the macroscopic, microscopic and chemical characters and the intergeneric relationships of Pholiota. The bulk of the book comprises a taxonomic treatment of the genus and includes extensive descriptions and drawings of the most important microscopis characters of 205 species arranged in 48 groups called stirpes, 16 sections and 7 subgenera. More than half of the species are new. The keys are scattered throughout the entire taxonomic section. This is a great inconvenience as they lead to names without page numbers, leaving the reader with the choice of either adding the page numbers to the keys himself or else repeatedly looking up the appropriate keys or descriptions in the index. The 115 black-and-white photographs are of excellent quality and very instructive.