LYCOGALA 



Gen., Tab. 95. The plasmodium is pale pink, soon becomes buff 

 when exposed in fruiting, finally pallid or somewhat livid, and 

 is outwardly rapidly changed into the stout, tough peridium. 

 This consists of an intricate network of irregular gelatinous 

 tubules enclosing within the meshes protoplasmic masses of 

 pretty uniform size, 60-100 p. Outwardly the protoplasmic 

 vesicles predominate ; inwardly the gelatinous tubules, which 

 are, in some instances at least, continued toward the centre of 

 the fructification to form the capillitium. The protoplasmic 

 masses referred to respond to ordinary stains, are sometimes 

 simply granular, sometimes with one or more nuclei, sometimes 

 broken into numberless small cells corresponding in size and 

 appearance to ordinary spores. The tubular network or matrix, 

 in which the protoplasmic masses lie, refuses stain, as gentian 

 violet ; the walls of the tubules swell under acetic acid, and 

 exhibit a lining layer marked as the capillitium filaments. In 

 fact, the latter are simply branching continuations of the former 

 less the gelatinous outer wall. This is substantially the view 

 illustrated by Rostafinski, Mon., Tab. I., except that we fail to 

 identify the inner layer of the peridium as distinct in substance 

 from the gelatinous outer portion of the ordinary peridial tubules. 

 Mr. Lister regards the tubules and the capillitium filaments as 

 simply air-spaces between the masses of spore-producing proto- 

 plasm. This seems probable. The so-called capillitium here, 

 as everywhere else in this group, consists simply of the residual, 

 perhaps excretory, ectosarc left by the forming masses of spore- 

 plasm. The peridium, in the first place, was doubtless simply a 

 result of more rapid desiccation, and the masses of protoplasm 

 filling the so-called vesicles are simply spore-plasm in various 

 phases of arrested development. 



Not common. New England, Ohio, Iowa. Perhaps more 

 abundant in the Mississippi Valley. 



3. LYCOGALA CONICUM Persoon. 



1 80 1. Lycogala conica Pers., Syn. Fung., p. 159. 



1875. Der medium conicum (Pers.) Rost., Man., p. 284. 



