404 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



19. Koerb. Parerg. p. 90. Lecanora constans, Nyl. Prodr. Gall. p. 

 89; & Lich. Par. n. 124. Maronea Kemmler i, Koerh. 1. c. p. 91. 

 Lecanora polyphora, Tuckerm. in litt. On trunks and dead wood. 

 (Italy, Massal. 1. c. France, Nyl. I. c. Germany, Koerb. 1. c.) Not 

 uncommon in New England, and southward to Virginia. Pennsylva- 

 nia, Dr. Michener. Ohio, Lea. North Carolina, Rev. Dr. Curtis. 

 South Carolina, 3Ir. Ravenel. Alabama, Mr. Peters. Thallus small- 

 ish, verrucose-granulate, the granules now and then flattened, or even 

 subconfluent, often at first greenish-gray, but with more or less of an 

 ashy tinge, which finally (the hypothallus more strongly conditioning) 

 prevails, and becomes even fuscescent, limited, rather conspicuously, 

 by the blackening hypothallus. Apothecia of middling size (often large 

 for the plant, the diameter exceeding half a line), sessile, lecanorine, or 

 more or less perfectly zeorine ; the flattish, brownish-black, opaque disk, 

 which is received in a stratum of the medullary layer, submarginate, 

 and bordered by a thickish or even tumid, inflexed, finally crenulate, 

 or flexuously-irregular margin. Spores very numerous, in lanceo- 

 late-clavate spore-sacks, very minute, colorless, from roundish-ellipsoid 

 becoming a little oblong, twice or even twice and a half longer than 

 wide, and finally diblastish. A plant which Dr. Koerber has thoroughly 

 described ; but his second species (Maronea Kemmleri) scarcely indi- 

 cates anything more distinct than a state of the first, in which the 

 proper margin, perhaps always potentially present, and by no means 

 rarely observable, becomes especially developed. Such states occur 

 here, but they are not separable from the others. The lichen has the 

 aspect of a common bark form of L. sophodes. The spores are de- 

 scribed as simple by all the authors who have remarked upon them, 

 but I cannot but consider the protoplasm (" so weit es erkannt worden 

 kann, grosstentheils wolkig-triib," Koerb. sub Maronea Berica, 1. c.) 

 as dividing finally into two pretty regular, opposite parts, as observ- 

 able as could be expected in so minute an object, and in the European 

 as well as the American specimens ; this differentiation of the spore 

 resembling that of the younger conditions of the biscoctiform type ; 

 as if, in fact, the plant were a remarkable micro- and polysporous de- 

 viation from the type of L. sophodes {Rinodina, Massal., Koerb.), in 

 which the final development of the spore peculiar to that type has been 

 precluded, rather than from the type of Lecanora proper. L. sophodes 

 varies with spore-sacks containing twenty or more spores ; and is also 

 comparable with the present in its often luxuriantly fertile hymenium. ■ 



