﻿48 



Order 114.— FUNGI.^ 



Agaricus. 



virosus, Fr. Epicr. Waynesville, Aug. 31, Sept. 10, 



1844. 

 pantherinus, Dec. On the ground. Cincinnati, July 



12, 1842. 

 rubescens, Fers. Waynesville, Aug. 31, 1844. 

 , vaginatus, BulL^ Cincinnati. 



Muhl. in Hb. Willd.! The stations cited under CoUema pulchellum in the Synop- 

 sis of Lichenes of New England, ^c, p. 92, belong, as respects the New England 

 plants in part, and as respects those of Pennsylvania and Ohio wholly, to the 

 present species, which, as certainly known to Muhlenberg, Floerke, and Spren- 

 gel, I hesitated to consider undescribed. Thallus at first rosulate, mostly mono- 

 phyllous, with much of the habit of CoUema nigrescens, membranaceous, round- 

 lobed, papulose, rugose and very minutely subreticulate-rugulose above, beneath 

 costate-lacunose, from glaucous-green when moist becoming glaucous-lead- 

 colored when dry, a little paler on the under side. Lobes rounded, very entire, 

 ascendant, at length flexuous, and in old individuals the erect margins becoming 

 somewhat plicate, as in CoUema plicatik. Apothecia scattered, not confined to 

 the margins of the lobes, numerous (often resembling those of Leptogium azu- 

 reuni); at first subimmersed in the thallus, and deeply impressed, but becoming 

 subpedicellate, with a thick, entire thalline margin ; the concave disc at length 

 plane (or in old states sliglitly convex), fuscous-rufous, bordered by the very 

 entire, inflexed margin of the thalline exciple, and contained by a proper ex- 

 ciple, of which the white base (Jjypothecium, Eschiv.) is visible on dissection, 

 though it seems scarcely ever to extend itself upwards as a prominent mar- 

 gin. This lichen appears to be properly referable to that group of species of 

 the genus CoUema of which Acharius constituted his section Leptogium; and 

 also (if I mistake not), to be included in the genus Leptogium as constituted by 

 Fries in liis Syst. Orb. Veget. p. 255. In view, however, of the more recent 

 observations of Eschweiler {Fl. Eras. p. 232), upon the inconstancy and un- 

 certainty of the generic distinctions to be drawn from the presence or apparent 

 absence of a proper exciple in the CoUemcce, and especially the remarks of 

 Montagne under CoUema chloromelum, and his exhausting description of that 

 lichen in the Cryptogamia of Cuba, p. 110-111,* I should perhaps not have 

 ventured to separate the present species from CoUema, did not the characters 

 of its apothecia appear to me to correspond too nearly with those o{ Leptogium 

 tremeUoides and L. azureum, to permit of its being kept far apart from them. 



' By Rev. M. J. Berkeley. 



2 A distinct form, if not species, occurred at Banklick woods, Ohio, at the 

 root of a beech tree, growing in a bunch, with the gills attached to the stem, but 



* In his Cryptogamia of the Canary Islands in Webb and Bertheht's Hist. Nat. des Isles 

 Canaries, Crypt., p. 131, Dr. Montagne recedes from his earlier opinion as to this species, 



and refers it to Leptogium 



