Types: UNITED STATES: New York: Albany County, Karner (=Center) and Catskill Mountains (approx. 42.0093°N, 74.3821°W, alt. approx. 1000 m a.s.l.) in woodland clearing, Oct. 1869, C.H. Peck (Lectotype. herbarium acc. no. NYS-f-000823, HJB1000543). Lectotype designated by Eberhardt et al., Mycologia 114 (2): (2022) page 378 (MBT10000859).

Diagnosis: Pileus fleshy, broadly convex or expanded, whitish or gray, tinged with red, the disk deeper colored; lamellae rather broad, not crowded, emarginate and spuriously decurrent-toothed, whitish then ochraceous-cinnamon; stipe equal, solid or stuffed, not bulbous, white-mealy at the top, fibrillose below, dingy white. Height 2'-4' [50.8-101.6 mm], breadth of pileus 2'-3' [50.8-76.2 mm], stipe 3''-5'' thick [7.6-12.7 mm]. Woods and open places. Common. Center, Catskill Mountains, etc. September and October.

Commentary: Cortinarius communis (FIG. 23C), was described by Peck in his report entitled “Report of the Botanist (1869)” (Peck 1873a), although it was already published in 1872 (Petersen 1980). Murrill (1917) recombined the species as Hebeloma commune. The material at the New York State Museum is in several parts. In particular, there are two collections at NYS annotated as syntypes: NYS-F-000822 and NYS-F-000823. NYS-F-000822 is annotated as collected in October 1871 with no precise indication of locality other than “Albany, Center”. However, according to the curator at the New York State Museum (private communication) the date is not in Peck’s handwriting and may have been added at a later time. NYS-F-000823 has only Oct. as time of collection and location as Albany, Karner and Catskill Mountains. The exsiccata in the packet labelled NYS-F-000822 represents a relatively small and slender mushroom which is conspecific with Hebeloma excedens, both morphologically and molecularly (Database Record HJB 1000542. GenBank: ITS = MZ019437). We suspect that this may be the material that persuaded Murrill to recombine this species into Hebeloma, as, interestingly, his description in Murrill (1917) gives the collecting location simply as “Center, New York”. NYS-F-000823 is (judging from the exsiccata) a far more robust species and both morphologically and molecularly has been determined as a Pholiota, with spores on average 6.7 × 4.3 μm, without a germ pore and thepresence of both cheilocystidia and pleurocystidia, lageniform to utriform. In order to decide which of these two collections should be designated as lectotype, it is necessary to consider the original protologue, reproduced above. The diagnosis indicates relatively large and robust basidiomes with a stipe width up to almost 11 mm, which far exceeds the usual size recorded for H. excedens, and would fit more comfortably with collection NYS-F-000823. Further, the curator at the New York State Museum writes (private communication): “A strong case for why NYSf823 could be the lectotype would be the Peck illustration that was originally in the box of NYSf823. On the illustration is written “n sp” which was his indication for a new species”. It must therefore be concluded that NYS-F-000823 better matches the protologue and, thus, is designated as lectotype here. The description of C. communis by Peck and the observations made here fit well, e.g. with P. lenta descriptions of Smith and Hesler (1968) and Holec (2001). Pholiota lenta is considered to occur on at least two continents, America and Europe. According to Smith and Hesler (1968), another of Peck’s species, Flammula betulina (Peck 1907) is also synonymous with P. lenta. Sequence information generated from the lectotype suggests that C. communis or H. commune is conspecific with P. lenta as defined by modern authors (Holec et al. 2014; Tian and Matheny 2021).