Order SPHAERIALES 
Family SORDARIACEAE 
Perithecia superficial or deeply sunken in the substratum, and 
often erumpent at maturity ; usually without a stroma, but when 
it occurs, the perithecia are sunken with projecting papilliform 
beaks; thin and membranaceous to coriaceous; slightly trans- 
parent to black and opaque. Asci usually very delicate, sur- 
rounded by long paraphyses or intermingled with them. Spores 
usually dark-colored, 1 to many-celled, surrounded by a hyaline 
gelatinous envelope or ornamented with hyaline gelatinous apic- 
ula. The species are entirely saprophytic and generally grow on 
manure. 
Key to the Genera 
Spores I-celled.* 
Stroma absent. 
Ascus perforate ; spores partly or entirely surrounded by a hyaline er 
envelope I. Sorp 
Ascus not —— P but opening by breaking oft of the inelastic ascus apex 
spores ornamented by secondary gelatinous appendages with or vil 
11. PLE 
primary ones. EURAGE, 
Stroma present; spores surrounded by a gelatinous envelope and the germ pore 
elongated and lateral. III. Hypocopra, 
Spores more than I-celled 
Stroma absent. 
5 
es 2-celled, IV. DELITSCHIA. 
res 4- to many-celled. V. SPORORMIA. 
Stroma present. VI. SPORORMIELLA. 
The disposition of the genera corresponds most closely with 
the arrangement adopted by Rehm,f and differs from the later 
works of Schröter t and Lindau § mainly in the division of the 
genus Sordaria as recognized by them. The development of the 
epiplasm of the ascus into a gelatinous envelope or into gelatinous 
apicula is here recognized as a generic character, but Lindau 
states, inasmuch as all gradations between the two forms are 
ora Deutschlands. 
j Cohn, Krypt.-Flora Schlesien. 
4 Engler & Prantl, Die natürlichen Pflanzenfamilien. 
(39) 
* Pleurage zygospora is an éxception 
f Rabenhorst, Krypt.-Fl 
