LYCOPERDACEAE 69 



For cytological information by Maire covering this and other species, see under 

 Scleroderma ourantittm. 



Illustrations: Bulliard. Herb. Fr., pi. 430. 



Cunningham. Trans. N. Z. Inst. 57: pi. 1, fig. 1. 1926. 



Hollos. 1. c, pi. 15, tigs. 1-12. 



Krombholz. Abbild., pi. 30, figs. 7-10. 



Lloyd. Myc. Works, pi. 36. 



Lloyd. Lycopcrdaceae of Australia, etc., fig. 39. 



Lloyd. Photogravure of Am. Fungi, No. 22. 



Schaeffer. Fung. Bavar., pi. 189. 



New York. Pawling. Dr. H. S. Robinson, coll. (N. Y. Bot. Gard. Herb, and U. N. C. Herb.). 



Wisconsin. Sheboygan. Brown, coll. (N. Y. Bot. Gard. Herb.). 



Dakota. Huron. Miss Crouch, coll. (N. Y. Bot. Gard. Herb.). 



Colorada. Denver. Bethel, coll. (N. Y. B. G. Herb.). 



Canada. Ontario. Ottawa Valley. Dearness, coll. (Dearness Herb., No. 4783 od'l). 



LYCOPERDON Tourn. 



Plants comparatively small, globose, obovoid, top-shaped or pyriform; the base in 

 nearly all of our species filled with a sterile, honeycomb tissue (subgleba); cortex some- 

 times smooth but usually composed of a coat of spines, scales, warts, or scurf, the spines 

 frequently converging at their apices to form stellate groups. Inner peridium thin, 

 papery and flaccid, opening by a definite apical mouth and collapsing more or less as the 

 spores escape. Gleba composed of minute chambers which are lined with the hyme- 

 nium, white when young, changing as the plant ripens through yellowish or olive to 

 brown or purplish. Capillitium well developed, composed of long, branched or un- 

 branched interwoven threads which are continuous with the inner peridium and the 

 subgleba. From the center of the subgleba the threads may extend upward in such a 

 thick fascicle as to form a more or less conspicuous column called the columella. Sub- 

 gleba in most species obvious and "cellular" in structure, that is, composed of small or 

 rather large empty chambers. Spores globose or rarely elliptical, commonly warted or 

 spiny, in most species with a short or long pedicel. Basidia short and plump with four 

 slender, apical sterigmata that are usually of unequal length (2-3-spored forms are said 

 to occur). 



In L. polymorphum, the subgleba is not cellular but formed of homogeneous tissue. 

 In L. pusillum it is lacking. In some species a distinct homogeneous diaphragm very 

 similar in structure to the inner peridium separates the subgleba from the fertile tissue; 

 in other cases the two may merge imperceptibly into each other. For the develop- 

 ment of Lycoperdon depression in the diaphragm group, see Rabinowitsch (I.e.); for 

 the group without diaphragm, see Bonorden. In his paper on the development of L. 

 depressum (1. c.) Cunningham says: 



"About the time of the commencement of the breaking-up of the tramal plates, 

 hyphae from the endoperidium (of the capillitium type, being thick-walled and spar- 

 ingly branched) grow out from the endoperidium into the cavity of the gleba, following 

 for the most part the inner portions of the glebal plates. They develop in large 

 numbers, so that soon the whole cavity of the gleba becomes filled with them." 



Though he does not say so in so many words, it is evident that he means that these 

 are the capillitium threads and that such is their origin. So far as we know this has 

 not been brought out before. As to the cytology, he finds that the cells of the fruit body 



