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COMPARATIVE MORPHOLOGY OF FUNGI 



Dacryomycetaceae. — Ceracea and Dacryomyces occupy the lowest 

 stage. C. Lagerheimii is resupinate on rotting wood in Ecuador and forms 

 thin, flat, waxy crusts with loose hymenia (Fig. 354, 1). In Dacryomyces 

 these crusts are thicker, pulvinate, gelatinous when moist, drying carti- 

 laginous, smooth at first, becoming cerebriform in age. They are usually 

 yellow and indistinguishable externally from Tremella (Fig. 354, 2). 

 The best-known species, D. deliquescens, frequently found in winter on 

 dead wood, has both an oidial (Figs. 355, 1 ; 357, 4) and a basidial stage 

 of development. Its cushion is tomentose in the early years; the usual 

 hyphae have hyaline, binucleate cells. Between these run thicker 

 hyphae, colored orange-red by a lipochrome; they extend far over the 





Fig. 355.- — Dacryomyces deliquescens. 1. Section of fructification with binucleate 

 oidia, O, at left; a young basidium, B, at the right. 2. Same, with mature basidia. 

 (X 600; after Dangeard, 1895.) 



stroma and at the periphery break up into an immense number of orange, 

 binucleate oidia which give a yellowish color to the whole stroma. They 

 generally divide before their separation into two daughter cells and, in 

 suitable nutrient solutions, develop to mycelia. In a second or later 

 winter the amber-colored basidia begin to appear on the hyphal cushions; 

 the dark-yellow fructification assumes the consistency of a gel by the 

 gelatinization of the cell walls. As in Tremella lutescens, here also a 

 succession of sexual and asexual fructifications are present except that in 

 Dacryomyces they extend over several seasons. The basidia arise as thick, 

 binucleate branches of the subhymenial hyphae, and are early arranged 

 in regular hymenia. The dicaryon fuses and meiosis, with longitudinally 

 placed spindles, begins. Meanwhile the basidia have attained full length, 



