Order Hymenomycetes. Tribe Pileati. 



Plate VI. 



POLYPORUS INTYBACEUS, Fries. 



Gen. Char. Hymenium concrete with the substance of the pileus, consisting of sub-rotund pores, with tliiu 

 simple dissepiments. Polyporus, — from nokvs, many, and nopos, s.pore. 



Spec. Char. P. intybaceus ; Very much branched, each division of the stem terminating in a dimidiate pileus from 

 a half, to one inch and a half broad, rugose, downy, brown-grey, more or less zoned ; pores white, turning 

 ochre-brown when bruised, extremely shallow, not decm-rent. Forming tufted masses form one to two feet 

 across, and about eight inches high. August and September. 



PoLYPOKUS intybaceus, Fries. 



PoLY'PORUS frondosus, ScJirank, Klotzsch, Berkelei/ in JSng. Flora. 



Polyporus frondosus, bouquet des CJiines, and Polyporls multiconcha, Polypore coquiller, Paulet. 



Boletus frondosus, Tolypore en houqnet, Persoon. 



Boletus frondosus, Sowerbi/ {not of IFithering). 



Hah. In tirrf at the foot of ancient oaks, but not growing immediately from the wood. 



The ancient forest districts known as tlie Vosges and Ardennes, ^^roduce abundantly this peculiar and 

 beautiful fungus ; there the grey " cock of the woods " still crows iir undisturbed regahty, and from the 

 resemblance Polyporus intylaceus, seated among the grass at the foot of a tree, bears to his wife wlule she 

 is brooding over their progeny, it is not unaptly called " La poule qui couve ;" but we must by no means 

 confound our " conveuse," the grey grouse hen, with the flaunting belles of the farm-yard ; sober grey-brown, 

 reheved with zones of a deeper shade, is the only colour the pileus ever displays, wliile the under surface is 

 snowy-white, hke the bird's down, when she angrily elevates her feathers. 



In England this plant is rare, and apparently not so luxuriant in its development as in Hungary, and the 

 Ehenish forests, where it attains an immense weight ; but it is so firm and compact that the relative bulk is 

 not as great as might be expected. The accompanjing drawing is the precise size of a specimen which 

 weighed nearly six pomids ; it consisted of tliree "bouquets", united at the roots, and deeply imbedded in 

 turf, at the foot of an ancient oak. Considered separately, each bouquet is arranged iu the rosette style, 

 and consists of a great number of petal-hke fronds, growijig out of, and " their bases confluent with, the 

 compound stem" (Fries), in common parlance, "like a cauliflower." The minor stems are convex on the 

 under, and fiat on the upper sui-face, with a central depression from the dimidiate terminal fronds i; they 

 are perfectly smooth and free from pores, wliich appear only on the under side of the pileus, and are mere 

 depressions in the substance of the hymeuium, not the oi-ifices of tubes which this Fohjporus does not pos- 

 sess, even in old age. 



Paulet, whose figure is extremely good, thus describes his "Coquilles en bouquet." "These plants are 

 very remarkable from the number of their pilei {chapitemix), disposed on a single foot, hke shells, one over 

 the other but without toucliing each other ; also by the size and weight of the plants, sometimes above forty 



' Persoon says that Boletus ramosissimiis of Jacquin and Sclioeffer, differs fi-om our present subject iu the 

 pileus not being dimidiate ; dimidiate means proceeding from one half of the stem ; not growing aU round it. 



