1902] THREE NEW 



39 



On examination of the structure it was at once clear that 

 the fungus was a very interesting one. Nearly the entire inte- 

 rior of the fruit body is occupied by minute asci, not collected 

 into a single tuft as in the pyrenomycetes, but scattered and 

 intermingled with the mycelium. The asci are separated into 

 small fields by radiating strands or thin plates of mycelium, form- . 

 ing sterile avenues from which the branches arise that ultimately 

 bear the asci and are intermingled with them. Since the fields 

 of asci are more or less elongate and thin, they too, have a 

 more or less radial direction from the point where the fruit body 

 is in contact with the host. The surface of the fruit body is a 

 thin and delicate wall formed by the coalescence of hyphae into 

 a membranous envelop which is joined by the terminations of 

 the radiating sterile avenues. 



The arrangement of the asci in fields separated by sterile 



avenues of mycelium suggested that the fungus was related to 

 the Tuberineae. How^ever, the asci do not form a hymenium 

 lining the walls of chambers in the interior, but they are irregu- 

 larly intermingled in the fields which they occupy. This places 

 the fungus definitely in the order Plectascineae.s In Fischer's 

 arrangement of this order there are six families. In the first 

 three families, Gymnoascaceae, Aspergillaceae, and Onygena- 

 ceae, the asci are irregularly distributed throughout the interior of 

 the fruit body, while in the Elaphomycetaceae and Terfeziaceae^ 

 there are sterile avenues separating the fertile fields into groups. 

 It is evident that our plant possesses certain points of close 

 agreement with these two families, but the internal structure is 

 much more simple, and the asci and spores are not so highly 

 specialized, while the thin membranous, rudimentary envelop is 

 very unlike the thick and differentiated wall of the members of 

 these two families. 



It is evidently a plant of very simple structure. It shows 

 some points of resemblance in this respect with the Gymnoasca- 



s Engler and Prantl, Pflanzenfamilien i' : 290. 



the Trichocomaceae have a highly specialized and peculiar capillitium, too 

 remote from our plant for comparison. 



