Entoloma - Taxonomic History

Taxonomic History

The name is derived from the Greek entos (ἐντός) meaning inner and lóma (λῶμα) meaning fringe from the in-rolled margin. The Swedish mycologist Elias Magnus Fries classified all pink-spored gilled fungi in a series Hyporhodius within his large genus Agaricus, subdividing into five tribes based on cap shape, gills and size in 1821. He later refined this in 1838, placing those with universal veils into tribe Volvaria, those with free gills and a discrete stipe into tribe Pluteus, those with a Tricholoma-like shape into tribe Entoloma, and those with a depressed cap and decurrent gills into tribe Clitopilus. The small tribe Leptonia had convex fleshy membranaceous caps, the tribe Nolanea, were slender fungi with bell-shaped caps and hollow stems, and lastly tribe Eccilia had umblicilate caps and adnate gills. Paul Kummer raised Entoloma, Nolanea, Leptonia and Eccilia to genus-level in 1871, though Lucien Quélet created a new genus Rhodophyllus uniting all those fungi with pinkish-red adnate or sinuate gills and angular spores, similar in scope to the original Hyporhodius. The two classifications coexisted until recently, with those taxonomists favoring a broader genus concept following Quélet, and the others Kummer. French mycologist Henri Romagnesi took up study of the genus in what was to last over forty years, describing new species and creating a new infrageneric classification making it one of the most studied and best known agaric genera to date. Over time, more authors and texts have followed Kummer.

The genus, as strictly defined, appears to be polyphyletic when looking at data produced by the molecular study by Moncalvo in 2002, with species of Nolanea, Leptonia and Inocephalus interspersed with various Entoloma species in a broadly monophyletic entolomatoid group.