BULLETIN 



OF THE 



TORREY BOTANICAL CLUB. 



Vol. I X.I New York, May, 1882. [No. 5 



New Species of Fungi. 



By Chas. H. Peck. 

 (Plate XXIV.) 



PHYSARELLA, Gen. nov. 



Sporangium pervious to the base, the interior walls forming a 

 persistent, spurious columella; capillitium composed of filaments, 

 with here and there minute knot-like thickenings, straight tubes 

 containing lime-granules extending from the exterior to the interior 

 walls of the sporangium, persistently attached to the former. 



A genus of Myxogasters belonging to the Physaraceae, and 

 related to the genus Physarum^ which, as amended by Rosta- 

 finski, is quite comprehensive and includes species that are exter- 

 nally quite unlike in appearance. I at first regarded our plant as an 

 aberrant species -of it, and have made it known under the name 

 Physarum mirabile. But, upon more mature consideration, it seems 

 to me that the characters above-indicated make it worthy of generic 

 distinction* The spiniform cross-bars, which are wholly independ- 

 ent of the rest of the capillitium, alone furnish a character too dis- 

 tinctive to be overlooked. The following species is the type of the 

 genus : 



Physarella mirabilis. — Sporangium cup-shaped or subinfun- 

 dibuliform, minutely rough or squamulose, reddish-yellow or tawny- 

 yellow, rupturing irregularly, the exterior part persistently adherent 

 to the top of the stem, the interior remaining entire and forming a 

 persistent, hollow, yellowish, spurious columella -slightly broader 

 above and open at the top ; capillitium composed of pale slender 

 filaments, and yellow thickenings of two kinds, one, minute scattered 

 swellings in the filaments, the other, long and spine-like, extending 

 horizontally from the exterior to the interior walls of the sporan- 

 gium and persistenly attached to the former by their broader ex- 

 tremity, conspicuous after the dispersion of the spores ; stem equal 

 or slightly tapering upward, reddish-brown ; spores globose, smooth, 

 blackish-brown, .0003 of an inch in diameter. 



Plant about one line high, on decaying wood, leaves and bark. 

 Autumn. Michigan, Dr. D. N. DeTarr. Pennsylvania, Dr. Geo. 



A. Rex. 



After the rupture of the sporangium and the dispersion of the 

 spores, the threads of the capillitium remain for a time like a^ floc- 

 culent mass attached to the spurious columella. The spiniform 

 tubes or cross-bars taper toward the interior walls of the sporangium, 

 and, when this is ruptured, they break away at their inner extremity 

 and remain fixed by their outer extremity to the exterior walls. In 



