REVISION OF ENDOGONEAE. 323 



Endogone malleola Harkn. 



(Figs. 72-78.) 

 Harkness (1899), p. 280, Plate XLIV, figs. 22 a & b. 



Endogone microcarpa Fischer pro parte (1897), p. 121, figs. 4-5. Rahenhorst 



Fungi Europei, No. 2516, nee Tulasne (1851). 

 Endogone pisiformis Bucholtz (1912), p. 196, figs. 88-96; nee Link (1809). 

 E. Torrendii Bresadola. In Torrend (1913), p. 101: (1920), p. 55. Torrend 



(1913), Fungi Seleeti Exsiecati, No. 159. 



This species seems to have been responsible for much of the con- 

 fusion with which the genus has been afflicted, since, although it is 

 fundamentally unlike the majority of the other types which have been 

 included in Endogone, it bears certain resemblances to them which 

 have led to a misconstruction of appearances that are frequently 

 found in the spores of the other two sections of the genus. This mis- 

 conception has led to ,the opinion that the chlamydospores, for ex- 

 ample, were to be regarded as sporangia, or at least that they might 

 become directly transformed into sporangia. This conclusion, how- 

 ever, seems to have no better basis than the fact that, in many cases, 

 the contents of these spores is so modified, that they become filled 

 with large granules or fatty bodies, often so uniform in size and form 

 that their spore-like character has been assumed. Thus Bucholtz in 

 his Beitrage, influenced probably by the use of the terms sporangium 

 and sporangiolum in Link's description, has assumed that the present 

 form may be regarded as the true E. pisiformis, and is thus the type 

 of the genus. The reasons for believing that this reference can hardly 

 be correct, have already been mentioned. In E. malleola, however, 

 the large spherical or somewhat irregular bodies which form the 

 fructifying mass are filled with numerous relatively large, separable, 

 walled spores; quite different in appearance from any differentiation 

 such as has been above referred to. 



The references to this species which occur in the literature, are for 

 the most part based on the material collected by Vittadini in the vicin- 

 ity of Naples and distributed in the Fungi Europaei under E. micro- 

 carpa. Fischer (1896) assuming that the determination was correct, 

 and that the material showed a condition of this species in which the 

 chlamydospores had become transformed into sporangia, regarded it as 

 a demonstration of the sporangial or hemiascoid nature of the spores 

 of Endogone in general. 



