158 Mycetozoa of North America 



3. Comatricha laxa Rost. Mon. 201. 1874. 



Badhamia penetralis Cooke & Ellis, Grevillea 5: 49. 1876. 



Lamproderma Ellisianum Cooke, Ann. Lye. Nat. Hist. N. Y. 11: 397. 1877. 



Comatricha Ellisiana Cooke; Ellis & Everh, N. Am. Fung. no. 2696. 1891. 



(N. Y. B. G. no. 7628.) 

 Comatricha Ellisii Morg. Jour. Cine. Soe. Nat. Hist. 16: 133. 1894; Ellis & 



Everh. N. Am. Fung. no. 3495. 1896. (N. Y. B. G. no. 11867.) 



Plasmodium watery white (Lister). Total height 1 to 3.5 mm. 

 Sporangia globose, subglobose, or short-cylindrical, obtuse, scat- 

 tered or gregarious. Stalk black, shining, often stout, 0.2 to 

 1 mm. high. Columella reaching nearly to the summit of the 

 sporangium, narrowed upwards. Capillitium lax, the primary 

 threads springing from all parts of the columella, at first straight 

 or slightly curved, branching towards the surface to form a loose 

 network of slender threads, either looped and anastomosing, or 

 with numerous straight, free ends. Spores purplish gray or 

 brown, minutely and closely spinulose, 7-13 ii diam. 



Var. rigida Brandza, Ann. Sc. Univ. Jassy 11: 126. 1921. 



Capillitium scanty, of rather rigid threads; columella often 

 widely forking at the apex. 



Type locality: Germany. 



Habitat: On dead wood. 



Distribution: *California, *Canal Zone, Colorado, Iowa, 

 Kansas, Maine, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Ontario, *Oregon, 

 Pennsylvania; var. rigida, *Minnesota. 



Illustration: Lister, Mycetozoa ed. 3. pi. 124, figs. a-g. 



This is hardly more than a variety of C. nigra, but a useful 

 center for forms with a more open capillitium. In the Herbarium 

 of the New York Botanical Garden there is considerable material 

 on pine boards used by Ellis for distribution as N. Am. Fung. nos. 

 2696 and 3495. It is apparently from several collections, and 

 shows the variation in the capillitium and otherwise, as found 

 usually in this center. There was no occasion to erect and main- 

 tain another species, as C. Ellisii, on these variations that are seen 

 sometimes in the same colony. On one of the Long Island 

 beaches, a few years back, there lay a large, weather beaten 

 packing case made of pine boards. On this appeared each year 

 fruitings of C. nigra, C. elegans, and C. laxa, sometimes together 

 or intermingled. From such a series it is easy enough to pick 

 out a small specimen that has the characters ascribed to C. Ellisii, 



