1899] Webster,— Notes on Calostoma 31 
outer coating of jelly soon falls away and exposes a tough dry ball as 
big as a hickory nut, bright red and with a pretty star-shaped beak or 
mouth at the top. From this beak a pinch will force a little cloud of 
yellow dust, the spores. Examination of plants in various stages will 
show that with the gelatinous coat there falls away, also the outer tough 
layer (exoperidium) of the puff-ball. Beginning at the base, this layer 
splits into strips and fragments which curl up inwards and drop to the 
ground. Below, from the base of the puff-ball, extends a swollen 
cylindrical mass of coarsely interwoven gelatinous strands, which form 
a firm elastic footstalk, that is sometimes almost completely buried, but 
often thrust forth from the ground for two inches or more. 
This fungus naturally attracted the attention of some of the early 
botanists, particularly of Persoon and Desvaux, the latter of whom in 
1809 established for it a new genus named from the peculiar structure 
of the radiately slit valvular mouth. Calostoma, which means Pretty- 
mouth, was Persoon's appropriate (specific) name. The further history 
of the treatment of the plant at the hands of botanists, of the variety 
of names applied to it, and of the way in which it has been for years 
confounded with a similar but rarer species described from Carolina 
specimens in 1822 by Schweinitz, under the name of Mitremyces 
lutescens, is clearly outlined in a paper by C. E. Burnap, in the 
Botanical Gazette for March, 1897. 
At the end of this paper, Burnap gives descriptions and figures, 
based on a reéxamination of specimens of the American forms, and 
clearly shows the existence of three distinct American species, viz. : 
Calostoma cinnabarinum Desv., C. lutescens (Schwein.) Burnap, and 
C. Ravenelii (Berk.) Massee. 
Recent examination of a number of good specimens of the first of 
these species, and of two specimens of the second, lately added to the 
herbarium of the Boston Mycological Club, have furnished the follow- 
ing notes. 
C. cinnabarinum Desv. The color of the endoperidium and of 
the inner surface of the exoperidium in the specimens at hand, is a 
bright, though earthy, brick red; hence Burnap's description of the 
exoperidium as “ ochraceous, often slightly vermilion ” seems applicable 
to old, faded, or rain-washed specimens rather than to fresh plants, 
from which, under good weather conditions, the outer coating has just 
fallen away. In such plants the color is intense, and persists strongly 
even after drying. "There seems, however, to be some variability, and 
