coprinus

Definitions

n. A genus of hymenomycetous fungi, many species of which grow upon dung. The gills after maturity deliquesce and form an inky fluid. Coprinus comatus is edible.

n. genus of black-spotted agarics in which the cap breaks down at maturity into an inky fluid; sometimes placed in its own family Coprinaceae

Sorry, no etymologies found.

I think of the angle of repose the manure pile assumes, how sparrows come to pick the redelivered grain, how inky-cap coprinus mushrooms spring up in a downpour.

October 2006
Springing from a log lying by the fence a dozen plants of the glistening coprinus have reared themselves since morning, fresh from the rain and flavored as sweet as a nut.

Some Summer Days in Iowa
The lactaria sheds hot, white milk when you cut it, and the inky coprinus sheds black rain of its own accord.

Some Summer Days in Iowa
= -- The glistening coprinus received its name because of the very delicate scales which often cover the surface of the cap, and glisten in the light like particles of mica.

Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc.
In wet weather this coprinus melts down into an inky fluid also, but in quite dry weather it remains more or less firm, and sometimes it does not deliquesce at all, but dries with all parts well preserved, though much shrunken of course, as is the case with all the very fleshy fungi.

Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc.
Does the coprinus digest itself by virtue of a pepsin similar to the maggots '?

The Life of the fly; with which are interspersed some chapters of autobiography