119 REVISION OF THE NORTH AMERICAN НУОХАСЕАЕ 
SPECIES INQUIRENDA 
Hydnum diffractum Berk. Lond. Jour. Bot. 6: 323. 1847. 
This species is said to be allied to Æ. repandum. Тһе descrip- 
tion is too incomplete to be satisfactory. The type material as 
seen by Underwood was ‘‘an amorphous mass of fungous matter 
with no indication of teeth whatever.” I have never seen anything 
that appeared to answer to the description,* and am strongly 
inclined to believe that the species represents one of the large 
cracked specimens of А. repandum. 
2. HERICIUM Pers. Neues Mag. für die Bot. 1: 109. 1794 
Hericium Fries, Syst. Orb. Veg. 88. 1825, pro parte. 
Medusina Chevallier, Fl. Gen. des Env. de Paris 278. 1826. 
Friesites Karsten, Medd. Soc. Faun. et Fl. Fenn. 5: 27. 1879 
Dryodon Quélet ; Karsten, Rev. Myc. 3': 19. 1881. 
Plant body branched or tuberculiform or rarely wanting, sessile 
or short stipatate, epixylous, parasitic or saprophytic, white or yel- 
lowish ; teeth pendent, short or long ; spores subglobose to oblong, 
smooth, white, uniguttulate, the guttula central and usually occu- 
pying half to two-thirds of the spore. 
The genus, which is not the same as Hericium Fries, was first 
established by Persoon, on Hydnum coralloides Scop. a single 
species. In 1797 Persoon again published the genus with several 
species in his Commentatio de Fungis Clavacformibus. Іп 1821, 
Fries, Syst. Myc. т: 408, placed the species іп the third tribe of 
the genus Hydnum namely Merisma. Не divided the group into 
two subtribes : Genuina which included X. coralloides and H. clath- 
roides ; and Сотр г which included H. Caput- Medusae, Н. hystrix 
H. echinus and Н. ramaria. Later in 1825, ор. cit., Fries raised the 
subtribe Сотрй to generic rank and gave it the name Hericium but 
expressly declared it was not to be confused with Hericium Pers. 
the type of which he asserted was H. coralloides. Why, therefore, 
Fries should have used Hericium as the name of his new genus at 
all can only be understood as revealing the loose nomenclatural 
methods then in use. Unfortunately the weight of Fries' influence 
gave a stability to his genus that its intrinsic value could not 
* Cf. Bull. Torrey Club 28: 207 for further discussion and a copy of the original 
description of this species. 
