1916] FoMEs OFFICINALIS (Vill.) 185 
FOMES OFFICINALIS (Vill.), A TIMBER-DESTROYING 
FUNGUS. 
Jc He Paunim 
This fungus was among the first to be recognized by the ancients, 
who discovered that it possessed pronounced medicinal properties—for 
centuries reputed to be of great virtue in the treatment of practically 
all the ills to which mankind is subject. Down to the time of Linnaeus 
it passed under the name of agaricum. With the adoption of the Linnaean 
system it received the name of Boletus Laricis from Jacquin (Jacquin, 
N.J.: Miscellanea austriaca ad botanicum, etc., 1778), Boletus officinalis 
from Villars (Villars, D.: Histoire des plantes de Dauphiné, etc., 1789), 
and Boletus purgans from Persoon (Persoon, C. H.: Synopsis methodica 
fungorum, etc., 1801). Fries published it under the combination Poly- 
porus officinalis, by which name it has continued to be best known ever 
since. Murrill!® rightly transferred it to Gillet’s’ new genus, Fomes, 
founded to include the perennial polypores, but his choice of the earliest 
specific name, Laricis, does not conform to the decision of the Brussels 
International Botanical Congress (1910) to make Fries’ Systema myco- 
logicum (1821) the starting point of our mycological nomenclature. 
Certain French botanists have considered that a very close relation 
exists between Fomes officinalis and Polyporus sulphureus; and so 
Quélet?! makes it a variety of Polyporus sulphureus, and Costantin et 
Dufour® state that ‘‘cette espéce n’est peut-étre qu'une variété du P. 
sulphureus, pourrant sur le Méléze’’. It is true there are distant re- 
semblances in texture, and a close similarity in the kind of decay pro- 
duced by them, but they are strikingly unlike in form, structure, taste, 
content, and longevity; and these features together with my cultures of 
both show that they are unquestionably specifically distinct. 
Through the courtesy of Dr. H. D. House I have had an oppor- 
tunity of making a critical examination of Professor Peck’s type of 
Polyporus albogriseus, and have no hesitation in accepting Murrill’s 
interpretation of it as F. officinalis. In appearance, taste, texture and 
structure there is no distinction between the two. 
