EVANS—THE NORTH AMERICAN SPECIES CF ASTERELLA. 297 
other hand, is almost always purple throughout the greater part of its length. 
The involucre, which consists of a fairly wide membrane without a special 
indentation next the peduncle, is continuous with the outer margin of a lobe, 
a tubular sheath being thus formed around each capsule. The margin of the 
involucre is entire or nearly so. The pseudoperianths, varying in eolor from 
white or yellowish white to purple, are inconspicuous and are usually 8-cleft, 
although pseudoperianths with as many as 12 clefts exceptionally occur. The 
segments are rather broadly lanceolate and cohere at the apex. 
The operculum of the brown capsule, although coming off in one piece, has 
an exceedingly irregular outline. It leaves behind a broad urn with a coarsely 
dentate or crenate margin. The cells of the operculum have conspicuous tri- 
gones and the same thing is true of the teeth of the urn, but the remaining 
cells of the capsule wall are rather thin and without trigones. 
The spores yield some of the most important characters of the’ species, in 
spite of the range in the amount of pigmentation and in size which they 
exhibit. Their color is usually some shade of brown; it may be a pale yellow- 
ish brown, a deep blackish brown, or some intermediate shade. The paler 
spores show the surface markings clearly, but the dark spores are sometimes 
so opaque that the markings are distinguished with difficulty. The diameter 
of the spores is usually 80 to 100 », but spores as small as 60 » or as large as 
130 » in diameter occur. In one instance the spores from a single capsule 
varied from 80 » to 110 » in diameter. The surface of the spore is minutely 
punctulate; it shows in addition distinct wings along the 6 edges and a system 
of anastomosing ridges similar to the wings on the 4 faces, in typical cases 
forming regular networks in which the wings take part. The meshes of these 
networks, however, are often incomplete, the networks in consequence being 
irregular. The wings around the spherical face are 10 to 20 wide, those 
separating the plane faces mostly 8 to 10 » wide, while the ridges are mostly 
8 to 15 » wide. When the networks are regular there are usually 6 or 7 
meshes across the spherical face and about 4 meshes across each plane face 
from base to apex. The wings and ridges are not only wavy, crenulated, and 
more deeply pigmented (in the case of pale spores) on their margins, but 
broaden out distinctly and show an irregular system of fine dots and lines 
when seen on edge. 
The elaters vary considerably in length and in diameter ; most of them are 
150 to 300 » in length and 12 to 14 uw in diameter, but extremes of 100 » and 
400 » in length and of 10 » and 18 » in diameter have been observed. The 
majority of the elaters show 2 spirals in the median portion for a variable 
distance and 1 spiral at each end, but elaters unispiral or bispiral throughout 
exceptionally occur. 
It has already been noted that the most important characters of Underwood’s 
three Cuban species were drawn from the spores. In the Matanzas material of 
A. cubensis, from which his description was probably drawn, the spores show 
the deep coloration and opacity which he assigns to them, but they show 
in addition, after soaking in glycerin, a distinct and regular reticulum formed 
of wings and ridges, essentially like the regular reticulum found in typical 
A. wrightii and the more irregular reticulum found in typical A. auwstini. 
The spore differences, therefore, easily come within the range of variation 
which the writer associates with A. elegans. Since the same thing is true of 
the slight differences in the epidermal pores and ventral scales, to which 
Stephani has called attention, the claims of the species for recognition clearly 
break down. In the writer’s opinion, as will be shown later, most of the 
specimens which Underwood and Stephani have referred to A. elegans belong 
rather to A. lateralis, a close relative of the mainland. 
