THE SAPROPHYTIC FUNGI OF EASTERN IOWA. 07 



peridium variable in color, yellow, orange, reddish, or chest- 

 nut-brown, smooth, scaly, or warty, at length breaking irregu- 

 larly at the top; gleba in young specimens pallid, soon becom- 

 ing blue-black; capillitial remains gray; spores in mass blue- 

 black, by transmitted light brownish, globose, spiny, 9-14 u 

 in diameter. 



Very common, and easily recognized by the characters 

 cited. Our specimens are usually an inch or two in diameter 

 and about half as high, attached by mycelial strands remark- 

 ably resembling roots. In pastures, woods and fields. August- 

 October. 



III. TULOSTOMEiE. 



Sporocarp globose, at maturity surmounting a long slender 

 cylindric stipe; peridium double, the outer verrucose or squa- 

 mose, deciduous, the inner thin, papery, opening by a regular 

 apical mouth; gleba not cellular but made up of an almost 

 undifferentiated mass of uniform basidia-bearing hyphae, de- 

 veloped from and adhering to the inner peridum; capillitium 

 of delicate interwoven branching hyphae appearing at the time 

 of the deliquescence of the basidia, the ends sometimes cla- 

 vate; spore-mass ochraceous-yellow; spores laterally produced, 

 rough, small. 



Easily distinguished from all other puff-balls by the stipitate 

 habit, especially by the character and insertion of the stipe, 

 which is long and slender and covered above by the base of 

 the sporocarp proper as by a cap. 



I. TULO STOMA. 



The only genus. 



1. Tulostoma ma.m.mosum [Michelt) Winter. 



Sporocarp globose, light-brown on a long slender stipe, with 

 a fibrous mycelium; outer peridium of minute brown scales soon 

 disappearing; inner peridium thin, membranaceous, smooth, 

 white or light brown, opening by a small, circular, prominent 

 ostiole; stipe bulbose at base, cylindrical, stuffed, of uniform 



