MERULIUS IN NORTH AMERICA, 



SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES 



EDWARD ANGUS BURT 



Mycologist and Librarian to the Missouri Botanical Garden 

 Professor in the Henry Shaw School of Botany of 



Washington University 



Merulius incarnatus Schw — While recently privileged to 



study in the Farlow Herbarium, I found in the Curtis col- 

 lection an authentic specimen of Merulius incarnatus Schw. 

 from Schweinitz Herbarium in such excellent state of pres- 

 ervation that it corrects the error which has prevailed with 

 regard to this species for nearly a century, and which I 

 followed in my work on 'Merulius in North America.* 1 M. 

 incarnatus was published as dimidiate by Schweinitz 2 and 

 also later by Fries 3 who had seen a specimen and empha- 

 sized the point by adding that this species is unique in its sec- 

 tion in not being effuso-reflexed. The only dimidiate, white- 

 spored Merulius which now occurs in the United States east- 

 ward from the Mississippi River is Merulius rubellus Peck, 

 and this species does not range east of the Appalachian Moun- 

 tains. As the descriptions of M. incarnatus by both Schwei- 

 nitz and Fries apply better to M. rubellus than to the true M. 

 incarnatus, there seemed no doubt that Schweinitz had col- 

 lected as his type of M . incarnatus, in North Carolina in an 

 isolated eastern station beyond its normal range, the fungus 

 which has since become better known under the name M. 

 rubellus. 



The authentic specimen of M. incarnatus in Curtis Herba- 

 rium is not dimidiate, in spite of the statements by Schweinitz 

 and Fries to the contrary, as already mentioned, but it is 

 distinctly effuso-reflexed, with the upper surface of the 

 broadly reflexed portion somewhat tomentose, pallid by age, 

 and the hymenium ranging from flesh-pink to the red color 

 of garnets, listed in Ridgway as garnet-brown and Hessian 



i Ann. Mo. Bot. Gard. 4 : 310. 1917. 



2 Naturforsch. Ges. Leipzig Schrift. 1 : 92. 1822. 



3Elenchus Fung. 1 : 57. 1828; Epicrisis, 500. 1838 



Ann. Mo. Bot. Gard., Vol. 6, 1919 



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