VERPA. 469 



On banks under shrubs, hedges, &c. Spring. 



Specimen examined from. Roum., Fung. Sel., exs., n. 4554. 



Pileus at first nearly even, olivaceous umber, dark at the 

 apex. Stem obese, furnished at the base with a few subru- 

 fous radicles, white with a slight rufous tinge, marked with 

 transverse rufous spots ; smooth to the naked eye, but under 

 a lens clothed with fine adpressed flocci, the rupture of 

 which gives rise to the spots, which are, in fact, minute 

 scales. In the mature plant the pileus is J of an inch high, 

 campanulate, digitalif'orm, or subglobose, more or less closely 

 pressed to the stem, but always free, the edge sometimes 

 inflexed so as to form a white border, wrinkled, but not reti- 

 culated, under side slightly pubescent ; sporidia yellowish, 

 elliptic ; stem 3 inches high, |- an inch or more thick, 

 slightly attenuated downwards, loosely stuffed, by no means 

 hollow. (Berk.) 



Verpa rufipes. Phil., Brit. Disc, p. 20, pi. 1, fig. 4; 

 Sacc, Syll., viii. n. 90. 



Ascophore stipitate, obtusely conical, rugulose, somewhat 

 iobed, umber, whitish and tomentose beneath, H-2cm. high ; 

 excipulum consisting of interwoven, septate, hyaline hyphae, 

 about 5-6 fx thick ; asci cylindrical, apex rounded, 8-spored ; 

 spores obliquely 1-seriate, continuous, elliptical, smooth, 

 20-22 x 12-14 p. ; paraphyses numerous, straight, septate, 

 stout, apex slightly thickened, 7-8 /a thick, tinged pale 

 brown, as are also the spores and asci at maturity; stem 

 somewhat ventricose, 4-5 cm. high, nearly 1 cm. thick at the 

 widest part, rufous, squamulose, stuffed. 



On hedge-banks. Spring. 



The pileus is thin, wrinkled, dark umber, and stands well 

 away from the stem ; it is nearly white on the under side. 

 The stem is much slenderer at the top than below, and is 

 tinged within, at the base, with the rufus colour of the out- 

 side. Height about lj inches; broadest part of stem, f of 

 an inch; pileus f of an inch high. This is intermediate 

 between conica and digitaliformis. (Phillips.) 



Specimen examined in Phillips' El v. Brit., exs., n. 52, 

 issued under the name of Verpa digitaliformis. 



I think that the present species will prove to be nothing 

 more than a form of V. digitaliformis, differing in the some- 



