MUCILAGO] DIDYMIACEAB 137 



of lime large, stellate. Stalks yellow, orange, or brown, 0*4 to 

 0*6 mm. high, often connected at the base by a vein-like 

 hypothallus, of spongy consistency within, and usually 

 charged, like the columella, with nodular crystals of lime 

 Columella subglobose, orange. Capillitium consisting of 

 slender purple-brown threads, branched and anastomosing, 

 colourless at the extremities. Spores violet-grey, 7 to 9 /x, 

 minutely warted all over ; about nine warts can be counted 

 in a row across the hemisphere. — Lister in Journ. Bot. 

 xlv., 187 ; Petch in Ann. Perad., iv. 350. Lepidoderma 

 tigrinum Rost. Mon., App. p. 23 (1876), in part ; Lister 

 Mycetozoa, 106, in part ; Penzig Myx. Buit., 51. Lepidoder- 

 mopsis leoninus v. Hohnel in Sitzungsber. k. Akad. Wiss. 

 Wien, Math.-Nat. KL, cxviii. 439, fig. 35 (1909). 



PI. 113. — a. sporangia (Ceylon) ; b. sporangia after the capillitium and spores 

 have fallen away, showing the columellae ; c. capillitium and spores, with fragment of 

 columella and sporangium-wall with crystals of lime ; d. spore. 



This handsome species is closely allied to Lepidoder?na tigrinum, 

 which it resembles in the cartilaginous sporangium-wall, and in the 

 structure of the orange stalk and columella ; it differs in the sporangia 

 being clothed with stellate crystals of lime, as in other Didymia, in the 

 sporangium-wall at length breaking up into areolae, and in the paler 

 smaller spores. Since the first gathering by Thwaites in Ceylon of the 

 immature specimen that forms the type (K. 1554), this species has been 

 found several times in that island by Mr. Petch, in perfect condition. 

 It has been collected on various occasions in Java by Professors 

 Penzig and Engler, and also by Prof, von Hohnel ; the latter makes it 

 the type of a new genus, Lepidodermopsis. 



Hab. On dead leaves.— Ceylon (B.M. 2511); Java (B.M. 2512). 



The following species are rejected by Rostafinski for what 

 appear to be sufficient reasons (see Rost. Mon., p. 229-301) :— 



D. Linkii Fr. 



D. muscicola Link. 



D. nanum Fr. & Weinm. 



D. parietinum Schrad. 



D. plicatum Corda. 



D. Weinmanni Fr. 



D. Sowerbeii Berk, in Sm. Engl. Flora, v. pt. 2, 313, 

 must also be discarded as the description is too imperfect for 

 instruction. 



Genus 16.— MUCILAGO Adanson Fam. PL, ii. 7 (1763). 

 The sporangia are confluent to form an aethalium, otherwise 

 the characters are those of the genus Didymium. — Spumaria 

 Pers. in Gmel. Syst. Nat., ii. 1466 (1791). 



1. M. spongiosa Morgan in Bot. Gaz., xxiv. 56 (1897). 

 Plasmodium white or yellow. Aethalia composed of elongated 

 compressed lobed and confluent grey sporangia, arising in 



