[All Rights Reserved.] 
ROYAL BOTANIC GARDENS, KEW. 
BULLETIN 
OF 
MISCELLANEOUS INFORMATION, 
No. 4.] [1912. 
XVII—ADDITIONS TO THE WILD FAUNA AND FLORA 
OF THE ROYAL BOTANIC GARDENS, KEW.—XIII. 
G. MASSEE. 
CHAETOMIUM. 
The species enumerated have all, without exception, been studied 
from specimens that have appeared spontaneously on old cultures, 
in Petri dishes, &c., in the Jodrell Laboratory. 
The members of the genus Chaetomium, owing to their fragility, 
do not make good herbarium specimens, and as the species are in a 
somewhat chaotic condition, advantage has been taken of the 
occurrence of living material to furnish amended diagnoses of the 
British species. 
Chaetomium, Kunze, Myc. Heft, 1, p. 15 (1817); Zopf, 
-Entwickel. d. Ascomyceten, p. 274 (1881); Sacc., Syll., 1, p. 220 
(1882) ; Cooke, Hdbk. Brit. Fungi, 2, p. 652 (1871). 
Perithecium superficial, varying form from subglobose to cylin- 
drical, rigid, very fragile and breaking up when the spores are 
mature, dark brown or blackish, mouth small, papillate, pale, sur- 
rounded by a dense cluster of straight or variously curved, simple 
or branched, rigid setae, collectively constituting the crown-hairs. 
Asci clavate or sub-cylindrical, 8-spored, deliquescing at an early 
stage. Paraphyses absent. Spores 2-seriate or rarely 1-seriate, 
1-celled, laterally compressed, varying from circular to broadly 
lemon-shaped in a front view, often apiculate, becoming dark 
coloured, usually blackish-olive. 
e presence of hairs on the perithecium, in so many genera 
included in the Sphaeriaceae, reaches the maximum of development 
in Chaetomium, where the crown-hairs usually form a dense tuft 
much exceeding in size that of the perithecium. These hairs 
present great variety of structure and forms in different species, 
sometimes quite simple and straight, in others again slightly wavy 
or flexuous, or coiled into a long, cylindrical spiral, all the turns 
being in the same direction, or one half of the spiral turning from 
(23773—6a.) Wt. 189—808, 1125, 5/12. D&S, 
