86 A MONOGRAPH OF THE GENUS PODAXIS DESV. (= PODAXON PR.). 



wall ; these are homologous with the so-called, sterile basidia or 

 paraphyses ; at this stage the peridimn breaks away from the stem 

 at its lower point of attachment, the margin being irregularly torn, 

 when it resembles a half-expanded agaric ; eventually the whole of 

 the dry and brittle peridium breaks away, and the stem remains, 

 with its blackish-brown mass of spores and capillitium resembling 

 a bulrush, the final dispersion of the spores being effected by wind 

 and rain. 



Of the six remaining species, I have only had an opportunity of 

 examining dry herbarium specimens, and Dr. E. Fischer, from an 

 examination of similar material collected by Dr. Schinz in South- 

 west Africa,* states that in Podaxon carcinomalis the spores are 

 borne at the apices of basidia, as described by Prof. De Bary.+ Now 

 DeBary's remarks on this point are as follows: — "Specimens of 

 Podaxon pistillaris, or an allied species, which were younger, but 

 had reached their full size, J showed the cavity of the peridium 

 filled with a gleba containing an extremely large number of narrow 

 and very sinuous chambers, very thin tramal-plates, and a dense 

 hymenial layer consisting entirely of stout four-spored basidia. 

 The capillitium-threads were already discernible as broad but thin- 

 walled hyphse passing on one side into the wall of the peridium, on 

 the other into the columella, and in the gleba running as in Lyco- 

 perdon, partly in the tramal-plates, partly transversely through the 

 chambers." § The above detailed account proves conclusively that 

 the specimen examined by DeBary was not a species of Podaxon. 

 As already stated, the gleba in the last-named genus is from the 

 earliest condition entirely destitute of chambers bounded by well- 

 defined tramal-plates, as shown in immature herbarium-specimens, 

 which are by no means uncommon ; in the Kew Herbarium alone 

 there are over fifty specimens of the various species, many very 

 young, and in every species there is the same spongy gleba, com- 

 posed for the most part, or in some species entirely, of ascogenous 

 hyphse, which are arranged in small, irregular, concentrated por- 

 tions, connected by straggling hyphse ; between these latter the 

 elongated branches bearing the clusters of asci grow, originating 

 from the hyphse of the denser portions ; there is no hymenium in 

 the sense of a tramal-plate, and having its surface covered by a 

 dense hymenial layer consisting entirely of stout four-spored 

 basidia, as in the specimen examined by De Bary, which never- 

 theless describes exactly the structure presented by authentic 

 specimens of Cauloylossum transversarium Fries, a fungus bearing in 

 vertical section a close superficial resemblance to an immature 

 Podaxis, but which on microscopic examination proves to belong 

 to the Hymenogastrea, and characterized by the clavate form, more 

 or less attenuated downwards into a stem, which continues through 

 the gleba as a central axis, the gleba consisting of numerous very 



* Hedw. 1889, Heft. i. pp. 1—8, pi. i. 



t Vergl. Morphol. u. Biol, der Pilze (1884), p. 343. 



J In the Herbarium at Berlin, marked Schweinfurth, Iter. 2, No. 275. 



§ ' Fungi, Mycetozoa, and Bacteria,' p. 318. Engl. Ed. 



