Henry J. Beker, Ursula Eberhardt e Jan Vesterholt, Hebeloma (Fr.) P. Kumm., Ed. Tecnografica, 2016

H

ebeloma species have often been neglected by mycologists. With the common English name ‘poison pie’, often applied to all Hebeloma species, they tend to be among the anonymous looking mushrooms left at the bottom of the basket after all the ‘interesting’ mushrooms have been taken for the cooking pot or to study. It is partly because they are difficult to identify, and partly because none are edible, but it is also true in general that they have a fairly anonymous appearance. When participating in forays or workshops, we have always experienced that colleagues were more than willing to hand over their Hebeloma collections.

The taxonomy of Hebeloma is difficult. Whether it is as a result of recent speciation, the plasticity of the species, hybridization or stasis is a difficult question to answer. What is sure is that this has led to a controversial taxonomy. Singer (1949a) opens his discussion on the “State of knowledge” in Hebeloma with the words: “The intrageneric taxonomy of Hebeloma is completely confused. The few species which are more or less completely known have been interpreted differently by the authors”. Favre in 1960 wrote “Il n’est pas de genre où la taxonomie des espèces soit plus embrouillée. Cest un véritable chaos”. In 1965 Romagnesi wrote: “Le genre Hebeloma Fr. est un genre difficile, auquel de trop rares etudes ont été consacrées depuis la dernière guerre”. Arora (1986) opens his discussion of the genus with: “This is yet another faceless and featureless collection of brownish mushrooms. Those that are too large to qualify as ‘LBMs’ [little brown mushrooms] most certainly fall into the category of ‘BUMs’ (Boring Ubiquitous Mushrooms). More recently Marren (2012) has written of ‘poison pies: “Not a group for the faint-hearted”. […]

We started working together, as a team, on this genus in 2004, making use of the new technology available to us both to apply molecular techniques and to use the power of a ‘modern’ database. Our goal became to make a revision of all European taxa. Our database now has some 4500 collections (parametrically described) of which about 4000 are from Europe or Africa. Every European (or African) type for which we have been able to locate original material is on the database, almost every database collection has been sequenced, at least for one locus (ITS), most database collections have been morphologically analysed and this information is stored as a set of parameters; further, almost every collection has details of the habitat and ecosystem where the fungus was found. […]

For natural reasons we have collected most extensively in Belgium, Denmark and the United Kingdom, but we have also made numerous collecting trips to other European regions: Andorra, Austria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Faeroe Islands, Finland, France, Ger-
many, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Svalbard, and so we have covered a large area.

We have also received nunmerous interesting collections from mycologists all over Europe. While this monograph does cover all of Europe, we do not have a representative number of collections from many parts of Eastern Europe and we suspect there are new species to be found in these areas. Additional material collected in Greenland, North America, Australia and New Zealand or sent to us from various parts of Asia and South America has been studied and may be included in our commentaries on particular species, but they are not treated any further here.

It is our intention to treat Hebeloma from outside Europe in future work. Within this book we have also restricted ourselves to European (and North African) names for Hebeloma spp. (with one exception, see below). As will be explained later, we have worked over the last two decades to understand, as far as we could, all the European (and North African) names and how they have been applied.

We have not yet done the same for the approx. 250 North American names that exist. Until we have done this we do not truly understand how to apply these names and we are reluctant to accept their current usage, which we believe no-one has rigorously tested. The one exception is Hebeloma incarnatulum. Here we have studied the type, both molecularly and morphologically, and we are confident that it is indeed conspecihe with the European named H. bryogenes. Of course, we cannot be sure that there is not another North American name that pre-dates this name; hopefully we will find out in the future.

Following this introduction, we provide some background to the genus Hebeloma, including its erection by Fries in 1821, its type and its taxonomic placement followed by a discussion of the way in which the infrageneric classification evolved up to the publication of Vesterholt‘s treatment of the genus in 2005 and the hugely important work of D.K. Aanen and T. Kuyper published between 1999 and 2004. We also briefly discuss the ecology and habitat of Hebeloma spp. as well as touching upon the poisonous nature of this genus.

Index:

• New Taxa, Combinations and Typifications
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
  1. Introduction
  2. Background
  3. Hebeloma Ontogeny and Morphology
  4. Ontogeny (Macroscopic characters – Microscopic characters)
  5. Infrageneric classification and molecular results
  6. The General Key (Key to Sections and Keys for Sections)
  7. Allgemeiner Schlüssel (Hauptschlüssel und Sektionsschlüssel)
  8. Clé générale (clé des sections et clé des espèces)
  9. Chiave generale (chiave delle sezione e chiavi delle specie).
  10. Hebeloma section Hebeloma
  11. Hebeloma section Denudata
  12. Hebeloma sections Sinapizantia and Velutipes
  13. Hebeloma sections Duracinus, Myxocybe, Naviculospora, Scabrispora, and Syrjense
  14. Hebeloma section Theobromina
  15. Hebeloma section Sacchariolentia
  16. Hebeloma sections Porphyrospora and Pseudoamarescens
  17. Ecology and Habitat Keys
  18. Annotated list of published names from Europe and Africa
  19. Bibliography
• Iconography
• Taxonomic Index

Prima Edizione del 2016, a copertina rigida in tela marrone, con titoli in bianco al piatto e al dorso; stampata su carta semi-lucida di buona qualità; ricca di disegni in B/N e di fotografie a colori; testo in lingua inglese.

Non semplice da reperire, soprattutto in Italia.

Come Nuovo [il volume, probabilmente mai utilizzato, non mostra danni strutturali, strappi, segni, mancanze o usure gravi che vadano evidenziate; legatura snodata e robusta; copertine rigide pressoché intatte; coste ancora luminose]