BREFELDIA 157 



Brefeldia maxima (Fr.) Rost. 



Versuch9. 1873. 

 PI. XI, Figs. 244, 245. 



1825. Reticularia maxima Fr., Syst. Orb. Veg. 1 : 147. 

 1848. Licea perreptans Berk., Gard. Chron. 451. 



^Ethalium large, four to twenty cm. across, papillate above, violet- 

 black at first, then purple or purple-brown, developed upon a wide- 

 spread, silver-shining hypothallus, the peridium at first papillate, 

 early fugacious, the capillitial branches often falling off with the 

 spores, leaving the black columellae rising nearly naked from the 

 base; capillitium abundant, the threads uniting by multifid ends to 

 surround as with a net the peculiar vesicles; spore-mass dark violet- 

 black or fuscous, the individual spores paler by transmitted light, 

 distinctly papillose, 9-12 ju. 



A very remarkable species and one of the largest, rivalled only by 

 Fuligo. To be compared with Reticularia, which it resembles some- 

 what externally, and with some of the larger specimens of Enteridium. 

 The Plasmodium, at first white with a bluish tinge, is developed 

 abundantly in rotten wood, preferably a large oak stump, and changes 

 color as maturity comes on, much in the fashion of Stemonitis splendens, 

 leaving a widespread hypothallic film to extend far around the per- 

 fected fruit-mass. In well-matured aethalia the sporangium-like units 

 stand out distinctly, particularly above and around the margins. 

 Closely and compactly crowded, they become prismatic by mutual 

 pressure, and attain sometimes the height of a centimeter or more. 

 In the center of the fructification, next the hypothallus, these struc- 

 tures are very imperfectly differentiated. Many are here horizontally 

 placed, and perhaps supplied with an imperfectly formed peridium, — ■ 

 if so may be interpreted the lowest parts of the capillitial structure, 

 the long, branching, ribbon-like strands which lie along the hypo- 

 thallus. Some of these branch repeatedly with flat anastomosing 

 branchlets, ultimately fraying out into lengthened threads, and re- 

 main after the superstructure has been blown away. From every 

 part of the structure so described, but more especially from the 

 margins, are given off in profusion the strange cystiferous threads, so 

 characteristic of this genus. These are exceedingly delicate filaments, 

 attached at one end, it may be, to a principal branch, at the other 

 free or united to a second which again joins a third, and so looping and 

 branching they form a more or less extended network, a capillitium 

 in which are entangled the myriad spores. Each filament bears at its 

 middle point (or is it the meeting-point of two?) a peculiar plexus 



