132 MEDICAL MYCOLOGY 



1832. Its first place of effective publication may be considered to be his Summa 

 Veg. Scand. 2 : 492, 1849, where he treats twelve species, many of them f oi-ming 

 the first section of liis Sporotrichum in the Systema. For spelling we are 

 equally puzzled, as it is Trichosporum in the text and Trichosporium in the 

 index. Saccardo and later authors have used the latter spelling. In any case 

 Fries' use of the former precludes the possibility of using Trichosporum for 

 another genus, and TricJiosporum of Vuillemin, Schachter, and later medical 

 men, must be renamed. One might consider the retention of Trichosporon 

 Behrend, since it differs by the last two letters, but the frequent interchange 

 of spellings of genera, such as Microsporum and Microsporon, as well as the 

 fact that the spelling Trichosporum has had the wider usage in the present 

 century, makes it a permanent source of error and confusion, so that I am 

 in favor of abandoning it altogether. 



Ponseca and Area Leao (1928) have reported asci and ascospores for 

 Trichosporum Hortai and have transferred this species to Piedraia. No one 

 has suggested asci in the European species while practically all investigators 

 have noted these structures in the South American species whether they have 

 called them asci or not. Also the lesions in the hair in the case of the 

 European species are much more serious, causing irregular splitting of the 

 hair, suggesting that the European species may belong in some other group 

 of fungi, perhaps remotely related to the Gymnoascaceae or the Eremascaceae. 

 Until more is learned about these imperfectly described species, we prefer to 

 leave them as an appendix of doubtful species of Piedraia rather than to 

 transfer them elsewhere. 



Piedraia is very imperfectly characterized. Mycelium thick-walled, septate, 

 agglutinating into solid masses on the hair; asci 8-spored; ascospores large, 

 fusiform with acute ends prolonged into filiform appendages. 



Piedraia Hortai (Brumpt) Fonseca & Area Leao, Inst. Oswaldo Cruz. 

 Suppl. das Mem. 4: 124-127, 2 pis., 1928. 



Tnchosporum sp. Horta, Mem. Inst. Oswaldo Cniz. 3: 87-107, Pis. 5, 6, 

 1911. 



Trichosporum Hortai Brumpt. Precis Parasitol. 1913. 



Forming characteristic hard, black, adherent, small, spherical or long conic 

 nodules on hair, Brazil. 



Hyphae septate, 8-12^ in diameter slightly brownish, thick-walled; asci 

 not clearly seen in culture; ascospores fusiform (Fig. 22), curved, greenish 

 yellow, each end acute and prolonged into an appendage about 30;u, long, the 

 body of the spore being about 30 x 10/a. 



On Sabouraud agar, colonies small, dark brown, very adherent to the 

 medium, velvety, margin somewhat lighter, finally becoming folded. After 

 10 weeks the whole colony is black. Growth much better on carrots where 

 the lighter colored margin is lacking. 



Piedraia Sarmentoi Pereira f., Kev. Med. Cimrg. Brasil 38: 49-52, 6 pis., 

 1929; C. R. Soc. Biol. 104: 680, 1930. 



