THE GENUS RHODOPHYLLUS. 



All the pink-spored agarics with angular spores are so inti- 

 mately related — especially with regard to their microscopic 

 characters — that like Quélet and Schroeter I think it right to 

 unite them in one genus, regarding Entoloma, Leptonia etc. as 

 subgenera only. And for this genus I adopt the Quéletian name 

 Rhodophyllus. — Schroeter coined the name Hyporhodius (adapted 

 from the Friesian tribal name Hyporhodii) for the same purpose, 

 but his name is less appropriate as the Hyporhodii of Fries 

 include also smooth-spored agarics, f. inst. Pluteus and Voluaria. 



When the nature of the spore is thus made the leading 

 character of this genus one of the Friesian subgenera {Clitopilus) 

 must needs be split up, as it includes smooth-spored species as 

 well as angular-spored ones. While the smooth-spored species 

 can probably be shifted to Paxillus (at least such species as C. 

 Primulas and C. nmndulus) all the angular-spored species (of 

 which I know anything) can fairly well be transferred to Eccilia, 

 without materially altering the natural limits of this subgenus. 



Of course in doing so you impair the parallelism which 

 Fries tried to establish between the whitespored series and the 

 pinkspored one (Tricholoma— Entoloma, Clitocybe—Clitopilus etc. 

 But this parallelism evidently is more apparent than real. 



Although the Rhodophylli are very uniform with regard to 

 their anatomical structure (they all have large, subventricose and 

 somewhat protruding basidia with long sterigms, rarely any 

 characteristic cystidia etc.) there is' one leading microscopic 

 feature which comes very useful for purposes of classification, 

 viz. the form of the spore. Nearly all the species can be 

 placed within two groups: the one with almost isodiametric 

 the other with heterodiametric spores. The first type of 

 spore is subglobular, generally more or less acutely 5-(6-) 

 angular; the second ovate or oval, more or less angular or wavy. 

 To the former belongs the majority of the Entolomas (Genuini 



