Order Hymenomycetes. Tribe Cujmlati. 



Plate X. 



PEZIZA TUBEROSA, Buinani. 



Tuberous Peziza. 

 Series Aleurja.* Sub-genus Geopyxis.^ 



Spec. Char. Peziza tuberosa. Cup thin, infundibuliform, bright brown, at length pallid. Stem from one 

 to three inches long, running into the earth, springing from a shapeless black tuber. 

 Peziza tuberosa, BulUard, Dickson, Soioerhy, TFithering, Berkeley. 



Hah. Spring. Not common. 



There are but two long-stemmed Pezizas : cue, P. macrojpus, is a delicate, mouse-coloured, teoderly- 

 membranaceous cup, placed upon a slender stem above ground, the shape resembling an antique shallow 

 drinking-glass ; this species is solitary and rare ; the other is tliis singular fungus called P. tuberosa, because 

 the long stem, which is entirely below the soil, springs from a small black tuber. Many collectors might find 

 the bright brown cups, which are gregarious, without the slightest suspicion that they had any stem at all. 

 In woody glades, where Anemone nemorosa and the "pig-nut" {Buniwn Jfexuosuni) abound, this Peziza may 

 often be found also, which led to the idea that it was parasitic upon a root of one or other of these plants ; 

 but the " shapeless black tuber " has since been determined to possess a fungoid nature, and Mr. Berkeley 

 supposes, as Sowerby first suggested, that the tuber may be Sclerot'ium^ fungorum, var. lacimosum, which is 

 described as "hard, lacunose, black, subterraneous;" and as Agarieus tuberosum grows often par^sitically 

 from one Sclerotium ffimgonm), this idea of the Peziza finding a matrix in another is a reasonable sup- 

 position. A section, taken quite tlu-ough both, proves the tuber and' stem to be homogeneous, no point of 

 separation is internally traceable ; but this is not a proof that originally it was so, for the Peziza might con- 

 vert the substance of the Sclerotium into its own. Some SpJiarias fill up and change the structure of the 

 insects they fasten on so completely, that their wliole internal substance becomes fungoid : witness the ex- 

 traordinary Australian members of that famil}-, wliich are at least as great paradoxes as any of the others in 

 those regions, so startling to our old-world ideas. The great famUy SpJiaria contains a vast variety of 

 beautiful and most curious species, difl'ering exceedingly in size, character, and mode of growth, but very 

 few of them fit subjects for our style of illustration; as, however, we have nothing more to say touchin<^ 



' From oKevpov, meal. Fleshy or caruoso-membranaceous, pruinose or floccoso-furfuraceous from the concrete 

 veil. 



2 From y^, earth, and nv^\s, a cup. Cup at first closed. Veil innate. 



'^ Oen, Char. More or less round, rootless, covered with a thin bark-like epidermis; bearing fruit, but rarely 

 all round. Named from <tkKtjp6s, hard. 



