MELANCONIACEAfc 



395 



perithecium is more or less flat- 

 tened or shield-like, blackish in 

 colour. 



Excipuleae 



A small family characterised 

 by the minute, blackish peri- 

 thecia becoming more or less 

 depressed or saucer-shaped when 

 mature. The wall and margin of 

 the perithecium is often pilose. 



MELANCONIACEAE 



The perithecium is entirely 

 absent in the present group ; there 

 is usually a compact mass of 

 hyphae located in the substance 

 of the substratum, and from this 

 the fruiting surface, consisting 

 of a densely crowded mass of 

 conidiophores, originates, and 

 becomes erumpent, or bursts 

 through the matrix to liberate 

 the conidia in the air. The fruit 

 masses are usually dusky or 

 greyish, less frequently brightly YlG . l2() .. ColleMHchum linde . 



Coloured. muthianum, a parasite attacking 



the pods of French beans, scarlet 

 runners, etc. i, a diseased pod 



of a scarlet runner : the fungus causes large, irregularly shaped patches of dead 

 tissue, bounded by a dark line ; 2, section through a fruit pustule showing elongated 

 conidiophores, each bearing a conidium at its apex; two elongated, sterile, spine- 

 like hyphae are also shown. The genus Colletotrichuin only differs from Gloeo- 

 sporium in having long, sterile spines mixed with the conidiophores. Fig. i, 

 slightly reduced ; 2, mag. 



