CONTRIBUTION FROM THE CRYPTOGAMIC LABORATORIES OF 

 HARVARD UNIVERSITY. LXXXIX. 



NOTE ON TWO REMARKABLE ASCOMYCETES. 

 Bt Roland Thaxter. 



Received June 12, 1922. Presented October 11, 1922. 



The first of the two striking fungi considered and illustrated in the 

 present Note, is a member of the Hypocreales, belonging to the genus 

 Hypocreopsis. This name was first used by P. A. Karsten (1873) in 

 a list of corrigenda, p. 251, to replace the preoccupied Dozy a which he 

 had used on p. 221 of the same publication; the Sphaeria riccioidea of 

 Bolton (1791) being taken as the type. According to Tode (1790), 

 who called it Acrospermwn lichenoides, it was first referred to by J. A. 

 Scopoli (1760), p. 109, and in a later edition (1772), p. 393, where it 

 was given as Var. 1, under Lichen physodcs. This reference is made 

 under " Synonyma Omissa" by Tode on p. 47 of the paper cited; but 

 although he doubtless had good reasons for making it, they are not 

 wholly apparent to one who reads the two descriptions. The matter 

 has, however, a merely historical interest; since, unless one of them 

 should be designated as a nomen conservandum, neither is likely to be 

 generally recognized by mycologists; although Seaver in his revision 

 of the Hypocreales (1910 a and b) has combined the specific name of 

 Tode with the generic name of Karsten. In the absence of a nomen 

 conservandum, still another new combination may be necessary; 

 since Montague, who appears to have been the first to refer to this 

 species after 1821, using a new specific name, called it first (1836) 

 Sphaeria parmcKoides, and later (1856) correctly included it among 

 the Hypocreales under the name liypocrea parmelioides. It was 

 subsequently called by Berkeley (1860) Hypocrca riccioidea; and, 

 since the paper of Karsten above cited, the only recorded American 

 collection of it, made by Miss Susan Minns in the Crawford Notch, 

 in the \Miite Mountains, New Hampshire, was renamed liypocrea 

 digitata by Ellis (1885), an error corrected subsequently (1892) in his 

 Py renomy cetes . 



From Karsten's text, it is not possible to determine exactly what he 

 regarded as the distinguishing characters of the genus, since he gives 

 no separate generic diagnosis. He places it in the Dothideae for the 

 reason that he saw no perithecial walls, and does not compare it 



