THE SAPROPHYTIC FUNGI OF EASTERN IOWA. o g 



A remarkable species, little resembling any thing else and 

 yet perhaps sometimes mistaken for some brown-spored 

 agaric which has failed to open or expand. First described by 

 Dr. Peck from Illinois, it has since been reported from several 

 States from Nebraska to Pennsylvania, Very common here 

 in autumn about drift-wood in low places, alluvial meadows, etc. 



V. LYCOPERDINE^. 



Sporocarp globose or turbinate; in habitat, terrestial or lig- 

 natile; peridium double, at maturity dry, breaking up irregu- 

 larly or opening regularly with characteristic well defined 

 mouth. Gleba consisting generally of two parts, a sterile 

 basal portion and a fertile cellular portion with a capillitium. 

 At maturity all internal structures disappear except the capil- 

 litium and the spores so that that the interior of the sporocarp 

 presents simply a dusty flocculent mass. Spores borne at the 

 apex of the basidium. 



The peridium in the Lycopcrdincce consists of two separable 

 membranes generally very different from each other. These 

 are distinguished as the outer and inner peridia. The outer 

 is sometimes a stout thick coat, sometimes a delicate fragile 

 structure, breaking up into warts, spines, scales, etc.. or entirely 

 evanescent. The inner, generally more delicate, is often 

 papery and thin especially at maturity. 



In the gleba two sorts of hyphas may be distingushed. The 

 first make up the chamber-walls and consist of thin, delicate 

 walled, richly protoplasmic, septate threads, whose ultimate 

 branches constitute the basidia. Developed partially in the 

 trama, partially diagonally through the cells of the sporocarp 

 run the hyphae of the second form; these are thicker, firmer 

 walled, rarely septate tubules rising as modifications of the 

 more delicate tramal hypha?. The tramal hypha? at maturity 

 almost entirely disappear, often with considerable effusion of 

 water, as do also the basidia and there remain only the hyphae 

 of the thick walled form which constitute the so-called capil- 

 litium. The capillitial threads subsequently become larger, 

 their walls more thickened and commonly distinctly colored. 1 



1 C. F. Winter Crypt. Fl. Deutscklands, Vol. i, Pt. i, p. 893. 



