202 The Botanical Gazette. July, 
In addition to the true zthalioid forms described by Rosta- 
finski and others, a form with simple sometimes substipitate 
sporangia is found in all sections of the northern United States, 
which, for many reasons, is worthy of varietal distinction. It 
may be described as follows: 
Var. Simplex var. nov.—Sporangiasimple, gregarious, either 
free and separate or crowded and touching each other but 
with the walls not grown together; standing in effused clusters 
ona common hypothallus; elongated ellipsoidal in shape or 
distorted by crowding; usually either sessile with a narrow 
base, or substipitate attached to the hypothallus by a black 
plasmodic point of attachment, or occasionally stipitate with 
well marked short brown-black rugose stipes; entire sporangia 
averaging one mm. in height. Sporangium walls simple, 
sometimes lustrous, often having a few longitudinal folds in 
their lower half, pale umber colored, roughened externally by 
being thickly studded with rounded dark-brown plasmodi¢ 
granules; spores in mass pale umber colored, from 5.5—7.5# 
in diameter, with thin epispores very delicately warted but 
apparently smooth under lenses of medium power.—Perichena 
ceéspitosa Pk.; no. 2,700 N. Am. Fungi, E. & E. * 
Common in the northern and western states. Stipitate form 
Y 
with the lateral walls grown together, the upper sur 
: hese 
roughened with the dark brown plasmodic gran rms of 
simple zthalia grade into other and more complex herical 
ethalia, which grow in effused or sometimes hemisP 
