186 THE NORTH AMERICAN SLIME-MOULDS 



b. Sporangium globose. 



i. Evidently stalked .... 2. D. splendens 

 ii. Stalk very short, 5 mm., conic. 



* Spores warted .... 3. D. bulbillosa 



** Spores faintly netted . . . 4. Z). subsessilis 



B. Stipe yellowish or orange 5. D. thomasii 



1. DlACH^A LEUCOPODIA (BuU.) Rost. 



1791. Trichia leucopodta Bull., Champ, de la France, PI. 502, Fig. 2. 

 1825. Diachaea elcgans Fries, Syst. Orb. Veg., I., p. 143. 

 1875. Diachaea leucopoda (Bull.) Rost., Mon., p. 190. 



Sporangia rather closely gregarious, metallic blue or purple irides- 

 cent, cylindric or ellipsoidal, obtuse, sub-umbilicate below, stipitate; 

 stipe short, much less than one-half the total height, snow-white, 

 tapering upward ; hypothallus white, venulose, occurring from stipe to 

 stipe to form an open network over the substratum; columella thick, 

 cylindric, tapering, blunt, terminating below the apex, white; capil- 

 litium springing from every part of the columella, of slender threads, 

 brown, flexuous, branching and anastomosing to form an intricate 

 net ; spores in mass nearly black, by transmitted light dull violaceous, 

 minutely roughened, 7-9 ^. 



A very beautiful species ; not uncommon in the eastern states ; rare 

 west of the Mississippi. Easily recognized, amid related forms, by 

 its snow-white stem, a feature which did not escape the notice of 

 Bulliard and suggested the accepted specific name. Fries adopted the 

 specific name proposed by Trentepohl and wrote D. elegans, simply 

 because to him the peridium was "admodum elegans." 



The peridium is exceedingly thin and early deciduous; the stipe 

 long persistent. The plasmodium, dull white, was observed by Fries 

 at the beginning of the century; "morphoseos clavem inter myxo- 

 gastres hoc genus primum mihi subministravit." 



This species, as the diachaeas generally, affects fallen sticks and 

 leaves in orchards and forests and even spreads boldly over the foliage 

 and stems of living plants. 



New England, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, 

 South Carolina, Ohio, Iowa, California, Canada. 



