Order Hymenomycetes. Tribe Pileafi. 



Plate XXVIII. 



DtEDALIA BETULINA,i;/«. 



Birch free Dcedalia. 



Gen. Char. Hymenium consisting of anastomosing gill-like processes, composing elongated flexuous contorted 

 pores ; formed out of the corky substance of the pileus, or concrete with it. Name from Dsedalus, in allusion to the 

 Inbyrintluform disposition of the hymenium. 



Spec. Char. D.edalia betdlina. Pileus sessile, from two to four inches broad, corky-coriaceous, dimidiate, 

 zoned, tomentose or villous, deeply grooved concentrically, clothed with close coarse velvety down, greyish, pallid, 

 often green from the growth of minute parasitic algaj. GiUs nearly straight, slightly branched or anastomosing, 

 pale or tan coloured. 

 D.EDALIA betulina, BerJceley. 

 Agamcds betulinus, L'mnaus, Sowerhij. 

 Lexzites betulina. Fries. 



Hob. On decaying wood, posts, &c., principally bii-ch ; perennial. 



Badalias were formerly classed with Agarics, and in general configuration the present subject is 

 Agariciform, which made Fries place it apart, along with a few others in the class Letizife-i, intermediate 

 between Atjaricus and Folyporus. It is because in Lenzites there are no marginal pores, and the divisions 

 radiate giU-like from the base, that Fries expelled that class from under the great, head Polyporei; as 

 however their other botanical characteristics (the plates wluch form the hymenium being concrete, or of the 

 same substance with the pileus,) prevented their being placed among the Agaricini, they were in the case of 

 the notorious bat ; and our authorities are content to form one division of all the corky-coriaceous labyrinthine 

 species, and to call them DadaUa. 



A Badalia then is a corky-coriaceous, generally dimidiate and sessile, but sometimes resupinate, and 

 sometimes confiuently stemmed fungus, resembling a Folyporus in general growth and appearance, but instead 

 of the under surface remaining pored, it assumes a labyrinthine configuration ; however it may alter in the 

 course of expansion, or the processes become lengthened with age, they never make pipes terminating in a 

 plane of circular orifices for an under-surface, as a Folyporus does, but irregular involved cavities like a maze, 

 the complicated wards of a key, or sinuous elongated cells with their dissepiments resembling clumsy gOIs, 

 as in our present subject B. betulina. Whatever the configuration of the sinuses may be, the hymenium 

 lines them, and the spores may be found on a piece of glass, deposited as they are from an Agaric. The 

 handsomest of the Enghsh Dadalias is Querciita (which we shall present to notice hereafter), and it exem- 

 plifies the character of the class much better than B. betulina does. Others are very complicated and elegant 



