378 RESEARCHES ON FUNGI 



to Clusius, who had no scientific names for his fungi, the sixth 

 species of the twenty-second genus of his Fungi perriiciales. As 

 exactly reproduced by Istvanfifi, it gives us an excellent life-size 

 coloured illustration of a group of seven Collyhia fusipes fruit- 

 bodies, all arising from the top of a dark, rod-like, somewhat 

 obconical body about 1-5 inches long and 0-4 inch wide at the top. 

 There can be no doubt whatever that this body was dug up from 

 the ground with the fruit-bodies to which it is shown attached, and 

 that it was simply a stipe-base which had persisted from the previous 

 year in the manner described by Leveille. It thus appears that the 

 persistent stipe-base of Collybia fusipes, although not recognised 

 as such, was observed and illustrated in its natural size in an 

 admirable coloured drawing long before the time of BuUiard and 

 Leveille, some 350 years ago. 



Fruit-body Clusters and their Pseudorhizae. — Without knowing 

 of Leveille's observations, I rediscovered the attachment of the 

 fruit-bodies of Collybia fusipes to the roots of trees in 1912, and only 

 subsequently was my attention called to Leveille's paper written 

 seventy years previously.^ I shall now give an account of my own 

 observations on Collybia fiisipes which, so far as the persistence of 

 the stipe is concerned, confirm and extend those of the French 

 writer. It will be shown, however, that the supposed sclerotium is 

 only a much modified stipe or combination of stipes, and is not a 

 structure formed by the mycelium prior to the development of 

 fruit-bodies. 



In the month of July, 1912, fruit-bodies of Collybia fusipes 

 were found in Queen's Cottage Grounds, Kew Gardens, coming 

 up in clusters upon the vegetable mould near the trunks of certain 

 Oaks and Beeches. Under one large Beech were found nine clusters 

 of fruit-bodies which were distant from the tree-trunk as follows : 

 one 2 • 5 feet, four about 3 feet, one 5 feet, one 9 feet, and two about 

 12 feet. In general appearance the tree seemed healthy, for it 

 bore an abundance of green leaves and no big dead branches. One 

 or two branches, however, had been cut away, and the largest of 

 these, which had projected from the trunk ten feet from the ground, 



^ I am indebted to Mr. J. Ramsbottom for kindly calling mj' attention to Leveille's 

 paper. 



