1899] Webster, — Fungi in greenhouses 83 
FUNGI IN GREENHOUSES. 
Horri WEBSTER. 
THAT opportunities for collecting species of fleshy fungi are not 
ended with the setting in of winter will be evident to any one who 
undertakes periodical visits to greenhouses within reach. There, under 
glass, where summer and spring conditions are held captive, or made 
to order by florist and market-gardener, agarics, polypores and some- 
times puffballs show themselves at intervals, sometimes in such force as 
to prove unwelcome guests. That the species are often the familiar 
ones of the region is to be expected, though the forms they take are 
occasionally somewhat novel in unimportant points. But there are also 
to be found, occasionally, species not to be met with elsewhere, stray 
representatives of the flora of other zones and countries brought in 
with imported earth. 
An examination of the pages of Stevenson's British Fungi, or of 
Cooke's Handbook, will show that.not a few so-called British species 
are known in Britain only from their occurrence in “stoves” or hot- 
houses. Some of these, described from collections originally made in 
such places, have later been discovered in their native habitats, perhaps 
in Australia or Ceylon, but others are still known only as regular or 
sporadic intruders in pots and beds in hothouses. Among them are 
species often of great delicacy and beauty, while others have a more 
purely botanical interest. 
A few notes of a recent visit to some greenhouses near Cambridge 
are here given. 
In the first house entered a crop of lettuce, the third of the season, 
was being harvested, and at the same time men were making over 
the ground for the next planting. An inquiry of the foreman for signs 
of toadstools brought an interested smile to his face, and he at once 
led us to a spot from which, as he said, the men had thrown out a 
bushel shortly before. A few were left, and these on examination 
turned out to be Tricholoma sordidum, Fr., not an uncommon species, 
but showing here great depth and freshness of color, which did not 
wholly survive the trip home. In another house, also among lettuce 
plants, on a high bench, was a great display of Pesiza vesiculosa, Bull., 
in all stages, from the unopened globular young forms to the fully 
developed, crowded, irregular fruits, as big as small coffee cups. The 
owner, who was escorting us, remarked that he hoped to get rid of 
