SPORES COLORED, TRUNCATE. 



Fig. 702. 



Polyporus colossus. 



This is a large species of tropical America and Africa, but hardly 

 large enough to be called colossus. Compared to another that grows 

 in tropical America (Polyporus talpae) it is a pygmy. Fries named it 

 "colossus" from the West Indies, but did not give the size of his 

 specimen. The fragment that remains is only a few inches in diameter. 

 At Kew there is a record from Africa, where it has proved more com- 

 mon than in the American tropics, size 9x 12x5 inches. The soft, 

 spongy flesh is characteristic, no other similar Ganodermus known. 

 Evidently it is a plant of rapid growth. 



Patouillard first met a conidial form which had in the tissue large, 

 globose, rough, colored, conidial spores with scattered tubercles (see 



Fig. 703). He called it Polyporus 

 Adansonii. Afterward when he 

 received the normal form with 

 normal spores (Fig. 704), he con- 

 sidered it was the same plant, and 

 we think correctly, and called it 

 Polyporus obockensis. Of course, 

 he had no way of knowing anything 

 about Fries' plant in a jar at 

 Upsala. Massee also discovered it 

 was a new species and called it 

 Polyporus Hollandii. We have al- 

 ready commented on Murrill's bull in discovering this was a "new 

 genus," with "globose, smooth, hyaline spores" (sic). Further re- 

 marks under this head are not necessary. How it happened that this 

 fairly common species did not drift into Berkeley we do not know. 

 Polyporus colossus occurs in the American tropics, but is not common, 

 as we have only one collection from this region and there is but one at 

 New York. It is quite common in Africa, however, and we have a 

 collection from India. 



SPECIMENS. Barbados, A. A. Evelyn; Africa, P. Hariot; India, J. H. Irani. 

 Compare Adansonii, Hollandii, obockensis. 



, 369 



. 



Fig. 704. 



