158 Clavarias of the United States and Canada 



areas which occupy the angles and often run up and down the 

 branches for some distance ; young plants and upper parts of older 

 ones a light pinkish ochraceous color ; base at maturity, and in age 

 the entire plant, becoming a deeper ochraceous brown or reddish 

 leather color. Flesh solid and dense, toughish, nearly odorless, and 

 slightly bitter (a bitter taste is noted also by Bresadola). Threads 

 of flesh about 3-7jx thick, with thick walls (1.5-2.5^) which in 

 many places leave little or no lumen, running longitudinally and 

 parallel under the hymenium, irregularly woven and often knotty 

 in center. Dried plants are hard, rigid and brittle, and often 

 blackish and metallic-looking at the tips. Immature tips when 

 dried retain their whitish color. 



Spores dull ochraceous, minutely warted, elliptic, 3.7-4.6 x 

 7A-92]x. Basidia 4-spored, long-clavate, about 7.4jx thick; hy- 

 menium 50-75[a thick, brown in section, composed of 2-4 more or 

 less obvious layers and including a vast number of spores as in C. 

 stricta. Subhymenial layer not so distinctly set off in color or 

 density as is usual in C. stricta. 



Common on dead coniferous wood, or from bark at the base of 

 living conifers, often forming dense rows between slabs of bark, 

 and not rarely on mats of decaying coniferous leaves. From C. 

 suecica, which grows on coniferous leaves and has somewhat 

 similar but smaller spores, C. apiculata is easily distinguished by 

 the darker color, both when fresh and when dry, by the less bitter 

 taste, and by the harder and tougher texture when dry. It is very 

 closely related to C. stricta, and a careful study has brought out 

 little difference in microscopical detail ( the spores of C. apiculata 

 average a trifle longer). As it stands at present, C. apiculata can 

 be distinguished from C. stricta by its growth on coniferous wood 

 or leaves, by its average smaller size, and by its denser and tougher 

 flesh. The dried plants when soaked are tougher to cut and much 

 stronger. Material in Bresadola's herbarium of what we are call- 

 ing C. apiculata he has determined in part as C. apiculata and in 

 part as C. stricta. He also includes under C. stricta the plant on 

 frondose wood that we have so named. Of a plant on spruce 

 labelled C. stricta he says, "tips rufescent or greenish." Good C. 

 apiculata on hemlock from Ithaca (Atkinson) he determines as C. 

 stricta, and so in other cases also. 



