CONTRIBUTION FROM THE CRYPTOGAIMIC LABORATORIES OF 

 HARVARD UNIVERSITY. LXXXIX. 



NOTE OX TWO RE:\rARKABLE ASCOISIYCETES. 

 By 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 Dozya which he 

 had used on p. 221 of the same publication; the Spharria riccioidca of 

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

 who called it Acrospcrmum 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 physodes. 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; 

 sii)ce Montague, who appears to have been the first to refer to this 

 species after 1821, using a new specific name, called it first (183G) 

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

 the Hypocreales under the name Ilypocrca jMrmelioides. It was 

 subsequently called l^y Berkeley (1860) Hypocrca riccioidca; and, 

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

 collection of it. made by ]\Iiss Susan IMinns in the Crawford Notch, 

 in the White ^Mountains, New Hampshire, was renamed Ilypocrca 

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

 Pyrenomycetes. 



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

 regarded as tlie 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 



