1919] 



BURT THELEPHORACEAE OF NORTH AMERICA. XI 267 



This genus was founded upon a group of seven species, of 

 which none was designated as the type species. 



The distinctive characters of Lachnocladium are coriaceous 

 consistency and more or less hairy covering of fructifications; 

 by these characters the genus is distinguished from Clavaria. 

 At the time of publication of Lachnocladium under the name 

 Eriocladus, as first proposed, Leveille* restricted the Persoonian 

 genus Merisma to glabrous, coriaceous, branched species of the 

 Clavariaceae. He had Clavaria include fleshy species only, 

 Merisma, the glabrous coriaceous species, and Lachnocladium, 

 tomentose species so tomentose that the branches were tomen- 

 tose. Mycologists have not accepted Merisma as understood 

 by Leveille* ; they have transferred to Pterula most of the species 

 which LeVeille had in Merisma, and have by their usage modified 

 the idea of Lachnocladium by publishing as members of this 

 genus many species which do not have their branches tomentose 

 but differ from branched species of Clavaria by being coriaceous. 



Lachnocladium comprises a series of species parallel with 

 Clavaria; some of the species have hyaline spores, others have 

 more or less ochraceous spores, some, even spores, and some, 

 rough-walled to aculeate spores. Species with dark-colored, 

 more or less rough-walled to muricate spores are better refer- 

 able to Thelephora. 



LeVeille regarded Lachnocladium as one of the Clavariaceae 

 and the genus is located there in Saccardo's ' Sylloge Fungorum' 

 and by Hennings in Engler & Prantl's 'Nat. Pflanzenfam.' 

 Berkeley & Curtis arranged the species of Lachnocladium be- 

 tween those of Thelephora and Stereum in their 'Notices of 

 North American Fungi' 1 and 'Fungi Cubenses.' 2 Patouillard 

 includes Lachnocladium in his series of Thelephores. In North 

 America there are no species connecting, or intermediate be- 

 tween, Lachnocladium and Thelephora. While I have had no 

 opportunity to study the various exotic species with dark- 

 colored, echinulate spores which have been published as Lach- 

 nocladium, it seems very probable that the transfer of such 

 species to Thelephora near Thelephora anthocephala would 



iGrevillea 1: 161. 1873. 



2 Linn. Soc. Bot. Jour, io: 330. 1868. 



