DopGE: LACHNEA WITH A BOTRYOSE CONIDIAL STAGE 303 
medium is heated to 70° C. for about fifteen minutes. This 
method has been found effectual in inducing germination of 
ascospores of certain other species of Discomycetes.{ The out- 
lines of the spore are generally obscured as it germinates and 
becomes a cell in the hypha (Fics. 4, 5,). The conidia as well 
as the ascospores remain viable for a long time if kept dry in the 
laboratory, the former, sometimes living three or four 
years. Should several conidia be sowed together in a culture 
there follows at once a great amount of anastomosing of the 
germ tubes. 
The fungus grows well on almost any of the ordinary culture 
media. Conidiophores arise the second day in cultures on milk, 
bouillon, potato agar, etc. An agar medium in which the nutrient 
is a decoction from heated soil is especially favorable for the 
development of ascocarps. A potato dextrose agar gives an 
abnormal amount of conidial development. The conidia are 
formed on the spherical or knob-shaped ends of regularly dichoto- 
mously branched conidiophores, seven or eight such divisions 
often occurring. One might consider an aerial hypha whose 
main axis ends in a pair of sporophores as a part of the coni- 
diophore system even though branches ultimately bearing conidia 
arise at irregular intervals from it. Fic. 1 shows a branch of the 
third order at the time spore formation is just beginning. A 
portion of such a branch is further enlarged in Fic. 2, showing 
conidial buds from two of the ultimate branchlets. As spores 
mature they hang together in botryose clusters covering about 
eight pairs of end branches (Fic. 3, A). At B in this figure the 
conidia have been dislodged, exposing the extremities of the 
conidiophore subdivisions, now collapsed. The length of the 
conidiophore system and the number of times dichotomous 
branching occurs depend of course upon the kind of nutrient 
in the medium. On soil decoction agar the sporophores are very 
short, and there is very little of the aerial type of hyphae. The 
mycelial hyphae on the other hand branch more or less dichoto- 
mously and in this respect also the fungus is like the L. cretea 
studied by Fraser. The color of the aerial hyphae, conidiophores 
and conidia in mass varies from pale ochraceous buff to vinaceous 
buff (Ridgway), depending on age and vigor of growth. 
t Mycologia 4: 218-222. 1912. 
