iform rich chrome yellow. Sometimes it is symmetrical in form, but
usually it is more or less irregular and unsymmetrical in form. The
plants are 5--10 cm. high, the cap 4--8 cm. broad, and the stem short
and rather thick.

[Illustration: PLATE 41, FIGURE 127.--Cantharellus aurantiacus. Color
orange yellow, and cap varies ochre, raw sienna, tawny, in different
specimens (natural size). Copyright.]

The =pileus= is fleshy, rather thick, the margin thick and blunt and at
first inrolled. It is convex, becoming expanded or sometimes depressed
by the margin of the cap becoming elevated. The margin is often wavy or
repand, and in irregular forms it is only produced at one side, or more
at one side than at the other, or the cap is irregularly lobed. The
=gills= are very narrow, stout, distant, more or less sinuous, forked or
anastomosing irregularly, and because of the pileus being something like
an inverted cone the gills appear to run down on the stem. The =spores=
are faintly yellowish, elliptical, 7--10 mu. Figure 126 represents but a
single specimen, and this one with a nearly lateral pileus.

[Illustration: FIGURE 128.--Cantharellus aurantiacus, under view,
enlarged nearly twice, showing regularly forked gills.]

=Cantharellus aurantiacus= Fr.--This orange cantharellus is very common,
and occurs on the ground or on very rotten wood, logs, branches, etc.,
from summer to very late autumn. It is widely distributed in Europe and
America. It is easily known by its dull orange or brownish pileus,
yellow gills, which are thin and regularly forked, and by the pileus
being more or less depressed or funnel-shaped. The plants are from 5--8
cm. high, the cap from 2--7 cm. broad, and the stem about 4--8 mm. in
thickness.

The =pileus= is fleshy, soft, flexible, convex, to expanded, or obconic,
plane or depressed, or funnel-shaped, the margin strongly inrolled when
young, in age simply incurved, the margin plane or repand and undulate.
The color varies from ochre yellow to dull orange, or orange ochraceous,
raw sienna, and tawny, in different specimens. It is often brownish at
the center. The surface of the pileus is minutely tomentose with silky
hairs, especially toward the center, and sometimes smooth toward the
margin. The flesh is 3--5 mm. at the center, and thin toward the margin.
The gills are arcuate, decurrent, thin, the edge blunt, but not so much
so as in a number of other species, crowded, regularly forked several
tim