and core and the pores are of a uniform color (snuff brown, [303] ) and 

 of a hard, sub-woody texture. The pores are minute, with darker 

 mouths. This curious growth is rather rare in the central, western, 

 and southern United States. It seems to be absent from the Eastern 

 States, and I believe that Professor Peck has never recorded it from 

 New York. I have never seen it growing fresh, though I have speci- 

 mens from a half dozen correspondents. When fresh it is said to exhale 

 a strong odor, and is known to the natives as ''sweet-knot." I have 

 been told that they can detect it at a distance by its odor. Schweinitz 

 named it graveolens, and stated it has a strong sub-nauseous odor. 

 That hardly carries out the native name. At any rate the odor dis- 

 appears from dried specimens, and is contrary to the usual nature 

 of fragrant fungi, for the odoriferous principle as a rule gets stronger 

 with age. Around Cincinnati Fomes graveolens grows usually on 

 beech. 23 Schweinitz's original reference was on oak, and Ravenel dis- 

 tributed it from the oak. The plant, though rare, is well known to 

 most American mycologists, and was recently illustrated by Kellerman, 

 and also by Hard. 24 A little bit of unwritten history came to light on 

 my last visit to Paris. Stuck away in a closet I found one day the type 

 of Polyporus botryoides, as named by Leveille, from this specimen 

 that he found in the Museum "Patria incog." It is typically Fomes 

 graveolens, and I knew it as soon as I saw it. For sixty years it has 

 been kept in the museum, and no one had ever recognized it.- 5 



POLYPORUS POCULA (Figs. 369, 370, and 371). This is 

 the smallest Polyporus known, and it was many years before it was 

 known to be a Polyporus at all. It grows erumpent from the bark of 

 various trees, and is particularly partial to the chestnut oak, though it 

 has been found on hickory, sumac, ash, cherry, etc. It has a short, 

 curving stem, which is black at the base. Surface smooth, brown, 

 powdery. The pore surface is a disk, always turned toward the ground, 

 and about 3 mm. in diameter when expanded. In drying it shrinks 

 and becomes somewhat cup-shaped. The context is white, tough, but 

 soft when moist, brittle and harder when dry. The pores are very 

 small (about 120 mic.) and from 400 to 520 mic. ( l / 2 mm.) deep. The 

 mouths are almost hidden by a layer of minute, encrusted, hyaline 

 hairs, usually described as pruinose. 26 Spores (teste Cooke) globose, 

 hyaline, smooth, 4 mic. 



23 This plant, which Berkeley received from Lea, Ohio, he called Polyporus conglobatus, 

 but he afterward corrected it, at least Ravenel did, probably at Berkeley's direction. 



24 Hard, or probably the printer, got his figure upside down. 



23 Polyporus botryoides passes in our literature as a "Polyporus," not even in the same 

 genus as Fomes graveolens. No one has ever suspected from our literature that it had the 

 most remote relation to Fomes graveolens, and yet it is this same very peculiar species. It 

 is an illustration of the value of the usual fungus "literature" and "description." 



26 "Peziza. The disk is covered with a brown powder and appears minutely punctate. 

 After soaking in water the mouths of open tubes are very perceptible. They lie compactly to- 



nher, are very long (or deep), and quite tough. They may be asci. If this is not a Peziza, 

 o not know where to place it. It is not Polyporus or Ascobolus." Lea's original note to 

 Berkeley. 



Which shows Lea to have been a very observing man. Had it not been that the mouths 

 of the tubes are masked by a "brown powder," I do not question but that Lea would have 

 recognized it as a Polyporus. 



44 



