2 The North American Cup-Fungi 



recorded another of the writer's early collections made at Mt. 

 Pleasant, Iowa, on the seeds of basswood as Sderotinia Tiliae. 



As a result of the work done by Reade at Cornell University, 

 the writer some time after coming to The New York Botanical 

 Garden invited Professor H. H. Whetzel to monograph the genus 

 Sderotinia for North American Flora, thinking at the time that 

 this little task could be accomplished over a summer vacation. 

 This, however, proved to be the beginning of a lifelong research 

 problem which has been prosecuted by Whetzel up to the time 

 of his death and by his students and collaborators, Honey, 

 Drayton, White and others up to the present time. Unfor- 

 tunately, much of Whetzel's work was still unpublished, at the 

 time of his death. 



Although the task of monographing the genus Sclerotinia 

 was assigned to Whetzel, the writer never entirely lost interest 

 in the genus and its allies, and other members of the genus or 

 tribe as it is now regarded kept forcing them onto his attention in 

 such a manner that they could not be disregarded. One illus- 

 tration of this should be mentioned. 



During the early days at The New York Botanical Garden 

 occasional afternoons were spent in field work in the suburbs of 

 New York City, especially the Van Cortlandt Park section when 

 that region was more natural and unsophisticated than it is at 

 the present time. For several seasons the writer had collected 

 every spring on the rootstocks of wild geranium a discomycete 

 growing in large clumps which could not be identified. No 

 record of any such fungus growing on this host could be found. 

 Finally it was decided to name and describe the fungus so as to 

 have a record of it. It was regarded as a Sderotinia and knowing 

 from experiences previously recorded that some of these had 

 conidial stages on the foliage of the host, a careful search was 

 made for such connections. About this time a letter was ad- 

 dressed to Professor Whetzel as follows: "For several years past 

 I have been collecting each spring a Sderotinia on the root- 

 stocks of wild geranium. Perhaps you recall that I referred to 

 this species while you were here. During the present spring I 

 have found it as usual and have been following it up in the field 

 with a hope of finding its conidial stage. I have been unable to 

 find anything which appeared to be its conidial stage on the 

 leaves of the same host. However, I have in culture a number 

 of rootstocks which were infected with apothecia and in about a 



