Order Hymenomycetes. Tribe Pileati. 



Plate XXIX. 



POLYPORUS HISPIDUS, i?«//.«.^. 



Hispid Polyporus. 



Gen. CJiar. Hymenium concrete with the substance of the pileus, consisting of sub-rotund pores with thin 

 simple dissepiments. Name from ttoXus, many and nopos, a. pore, in allusion to the many pores of the Hymenium. 



Spec. Char. P. hispidus. Pileus a foot or more across, about four inches thick, pulvinate, dimidiate, but 

 occasionUy with an obsolete ku'ob-Kke stem, often imbricated, fonning very large masses. The upper surface 

 generally shaggy or hispid, but sometimes almost smooth and cracking. Colour varj'ing from yellow to rich red, 

 brown, or black. Pores very minute, at fu-st pallid, then yellow, ft-inged. Substance fleshy, but spongy, elastic, and 

 fibrous, red, yellow, or brown-red. Tubes an inch long at their greatest depth, the same colour as the flesh. Spores 

 yellow. 



PoLYPORUs hispidus, Fries, Grevilk, Berkeley. 

 Boletus hispidus, BulUard, Bolton, Jf^itJieririff. 



— ■ velutinus, Sowerby, TFitJiering . 



spongiosus, L'ujMfoot, TFithering. 



villosus, Hudson, Withering. 



Hah. On trunks of various trees, Apple, Ash, Elm, &c. ; summer and winter. Annual. 



Few Folyponises of the larger kinds differ more from each other than P. hispidus does from itself^ 

 accordiug to tlie position it occupies on the trunk, tlie species of tree producing it, and its stages of gi-owth. 

 Withering lias given three graphic descriptions of it, as B. Msjndns, B. sponyios/is, and £. velutinus, chai'ac- 

 teristics of various specimens falling under liis observation, and which he suggested might prove to be the 

 same Fungus, as it is now decided they are. The portrait before us was taken at Avington, Hants, in 

 August, 1846. The original grew deep in the cavity of an Ash tree, and possessed all the laxuriance and 

 brilliancy of youth, in which state none of its relatives surpass it in beauty. Only a portion of an immense 

 mass is depicted ; " it was so juicy and tender, turning dark-brown at the slightest touch, that it was most 

 difficult to preserve any of it to paint." "The upper surface was most beautiful, rich tawny orange-plush 

 with velvet margins. The tubes are in the centre, nearly an inch deep, and their orifices consist, as it were, 

 of a film of wliite velvet, which is only superficial, the tubes themselves being red like the substance of the 

 pileus, which almost resembles raw meat, dotted with the yellow contents of the tubes." 



During the same season a splendid mass of our poor friend, served for some days as a foot-ball in the 

 meadow where it grew, to a family of young people ; and this trivial anecdote is mentioned, as exemplifying 

 the texture of the pileus, light, elastic, spongy, but not easily ruptured, nor giving out its juices so as to soil. 



