90 Clavarias of the United States and Canada 



Clavaria amethystina (Batt.) Pers. Comm., p. 46. 1797. (Not 

 C. amethystea Bull.). 

 Coralloides amethystina Batt. Fung. Agr. Arim. Hist., p. 22, 



pi. 1, fig. c. 1759. 

 ?C. purpurea Schaeff. Fung. Bavar., p. 117, pi. 172. 1763. 



(Not C. purpurea Mull.). 

 C. lavendula Pk. Bull. N. Y. St. Mus. 139 : 47. 1910. 



Plates 24, 25, 28, and 84 



Plants small, densely cespitose and more or less connate at 

 base; height 1.5-7.5 cm., usually simple to near the top and there 

 branching dichotomously or irregularly into two or several short 

 branches, which usually divide again at their tips into a few 

 sharp teeth; color when quite fresh a beautiful deep clear violet, 

 which is darkest upwards and very light and tinted with buff at 

 base. Flesh very brittle and tender, solid, pellucid, violet; taste 

 mild, odor none. 



Spores white, smooth, ovate-elliptic, pointed at one end, 

 3.3-4 x3.7-6.6[jl. 



This attractive little plant is not common, but we find it every 

 year on the ground in deciduous woods. No other Clavaria is 

 quite so fragile, the branches snapping with a clean break at the 

 slightest pressure. In drying the color fades rapidly to buffy or 

 grayish tints and the texture becomes more pliable. It has not 

 been reported before from this state, and is scantily represented 

 in herbaria. There has been much confusion both in this country 

 and in Europe in regard to it, due largely to Bulliard's plate 496 

 which as C. amethystea represents an entirely different plant, a 

 form of C. cristata, which is also Fries's C. lilacina. As a result 

 both species appear in herbaria under either name or as C. pur- 

 purea. Spore measurements given by Saccardo and a good many 

 others are wrong. 



The descriptions by Persoon and Fries leave little doubt of 

 what plant they had in mind as C. amethystina. Fries refers to 

 Schaeffer's plate as good and to Bulliard's as hardly good (Epicr., 

 p. 571), and later (Bull. Soc. Bot. Fr. 24: 79. 1877) says that 

 there is no doubt that C. lilacina and C. amethystina are different 

 and that Bulliard's figures may be the former. Our plants are 



