MYCOLOGICAL NOTES. 



BY C. G. LLOYD. 



Old Species Series, No. 1. 

 CINCINNATI, O. JUNE, 1908. 



SOME OLD SPECIES. 



Nine tenths of the current mycological literature is devoted to the exploit- 

 ation of new species. However important this may be to the authors, the general 

 readers are more anxious to learn about the old ones. We expect from time to 

 time to devote a pamphlet to the "old species." We shall select those that are 

 most noteworthy and which lend themselves best to photography. In fact we 

 shall expect our photographs to tell more of the story than our words. We shall 

 not attempt any dry, technical descriptions of the plants, for the trouble with a 

 great deal of the current literature is that so much is written and so little told. 

 In fact, a great deal that is printed is put in to fill out and the leading truths 

 about a plant are often hid in a mass of verbosity about unimportant details. 



Nor do we claim any critical knowledge of a great many plants that will be 

 included in this series. We firmly believe, from the developments in our study 

 of the Gastromycetes, that the fungous flora of the world is practically the same, 

 and that one can not have a critical knowledge of the forms of any one country 

 without a critical knowledge of the whole. Of course this is impossible in a 

 great many groups of fungi that we shall have to consider. The best we can do 

 is to give the history of the plants as they are known in American mycology, and 

 if it develops that in other countries they have other histories and other names, 

 that will be a matter for the future, or for some one else. There are some 

 sections of American fungi, such as the resupinate Thelephoraceae, of which I at 

 present know very little: in fact, we think there is but one man in America who 

 does know them Professor E. A. Burt, Middlebury, Vermont. We hope to learn 

 them some day and have been patiently waiting for Professor Burt's long prom- 

 ised and long delayed paper. 



While these papers will be devoted to "old species," it is possible that in 

 considering special groups we may have plants we are unable to determine. We 

 shall not claim that they are new species, however, because we recognize the fact 

 that we know but a small fraction of the old species in these same groups, and 

 without that knowledge we feel it would be an assumption to pose as the author 

 of new species. We trust and believe that these plants will be very few in 

 number, for of the many specimens from the United States that reach us there 

 are few that we can not refer to some old species that we know. That is, in those 

 families in which we have worked with the old species. There are of course a 

 few endemic species in the United States, but they are relatively rare and the 

 greater part of them have now several names. 



TROGIA CRISPA (Figs. 211 and 212). If you live in localities 

 where the alder grows you will be very apt to find Trogia crispa for 

 it is particularly partial to the alder. However, it grows on beach 

 and other frondose \vood and I have collected it on oak. It can be 

 known at once by the crisped, swollen gills for we have no other fungus 



UNIVERSITY &F CALIFORNIA 



AT LOS ANGELES 



JAN 2 1942 



