Fig. 1066. 



HORMOMYCES AURANTIACUS, FROM REV. A. BOUT- 

 LOU, WEST VIRGINIA. Applanate, tubercular, soft, gelatinous, 

 drying hard, cartilaginous. Color scarlet (Ridg.). 

 Entire fungus seems to be composed of branched 

 chains of catenate spores (Fig. 1066). It was named 

 and figured by Bonardon who described it as orange, 

 and gave a characteristic figure of its spores. The 

 American plant was called Hormomyces fragiformis 

 by Cooke, apparently on account of its "purple" 

 color rather than orange, but "purple" in sense of Cooke is scarlet of 

 Ridgway. I have collected it both in Europe and the United States 

 and both are of the same color, and no doubt the same species, and 

 also doubtless the South African species, Hormomyces callorioides, 

 described as "rose" color. The plant has the appearance of the 

 plasmodium of some Myxomycete. 



Saccardo classes it with tremellaceous plants, suggesting that it 

 is the conidial state of some Dacryomyces, and Patouillard and 

 Hennings take the same view. I think there is no basis for that, 

 for there is no species of Dacryomyces of the same color, nor are there 

 any other tremellaceous plants known with similar spores. No one 

 ever found it that it did not have these catenate spores, and until 

 something more is known about it, I should consider it an autonomous 

 species. 



STEREUM ATROPURPUREUM. FROM MISS MARGARET 

 L. FLOCKTON, AUSTRALIA (Fig. 1067). Sessile, dimidiate, 

 thin, rigid, with a thick coat of dark, 

 purplish tomentum. Hymenial face 

 smooth, dark (almost black). Basidia 

 unknown to me, hence it is not possible 

 (for me) to refer it to a genus (Cfr. 

 Myc. Notes, page 680). 



About two-thirds of a section is 

 made up of loose, coarse, colored hyphae, 

 which are really the tomentose covering, 

 and one-third of very fine, pale (not- 

 withstanding the hymenial face appears 

 dark to the eye) colored hyphae (cartilaginous tissue), bearing abund- 

 ant small conidial spores. I do not know, but I do not doubt that it 

 belongs to the same "genus" as "Stereum" lugubre, whatever that 

 may be. (Cfr. Letter 46, page 7.) 



There are at Kew two collections from Malay. The first was 

 called Stereum aterrimum" by Cooke, in 1884, and the second called 

 Stereum aterrimum nov. spec." by Massee, in 1899. I did not 

 section either one of them, but judging by the eye, I thought they 

 were the same, and they are probably the same as this plant from 

 Australia, although (at present) both the Malay plants are well 

 named aterrimum" and this plant is distinctly purplish. 



R ? T Y. ERSATILIS ' FROM MISS MARGARET L. FLOCK- 

 TON, COLLECTED BY P. F. CLARKE, AUSTRALIA. Pileus 



712 



Fig. 1067. 



