129 
GYROMITRA GIGAS (Krompu.) Cooxg, 
By WituaM Parties, F.L.S. 
(Piate 334.) 
Tue occurrence in England of so rare a species of the Disco- 
mycetes as Gyromitra gigas (Krombh.) not only justifies a record in 
the Journal of Botany, but affords an opportunity of revising the 
descriptions previously published by the light of living examples 
veryone engaged in the study of the fleshy fungi must have 
frequently felt how unsatisfactory it is to be limited to dried herbarium 
specimens, which refu reassume any near approach to their 
atural condition when soaked i ter, ent im 
possibility of restoring the more evanescent characters they once 
f the s s under consideration this 
applies in an especial manner, on account of the great diversity of 
form it assumes in the same group of specimens. Size, colour, 
folding of the hymenium, presence or absence of a stem—all v vary 
within wide limits, that from only one or two figures of an 
author a very nadeate idea can be formed of its polymorphous 
saad sate: 
omitra gigas was originally described by Krombholz as an. 
Helvella, from which genus it was removed by Dr. Cooke in his 
m, on what appears to be 
sufficient ground, viz., the form of the folds of the pileus. There 
are two records of its appearance in England; the first by the. late 
Mr. Frederick Currey, in a paper entitled ‘‘ Notes on British Fungi,” 
read before the Linnean Society, June 18th, 1863,* in which he 
said, ‘This fine species has occurred once only, in a garden in 
Blackheath Park. It would seem from Krombholz’s fies to vary 
a good deal in colour. My specimen was brownish ye ellow.” No 
a word is said by Mr. Currey in reference to the size of the plant, 
an important character, nor yet of the form of the pileus, which in 
so variable a species should have been described ; and ag yp 
the original specimen cannot be traced at Kew igure is given 
of an ascus with its eight sporidia, ene 220 toca from 
which it appears the “sporidia are elliptic, as in G. aed — 
bee granular protoplasm, and an unusually large size. Thes 
ecorded occurrence of the species is in the Annals ¢ Sagat: “f 
Nat, Hist. 1875 (No. 1476), by Messrs. elie ey and Broome, in 
these Tonge ‘‘On the ground. Coed Coch, Mrs, Lloyd Wiynne, 
March, 4.” Here again we are not infor med what were the 
more striking features of the plant, and no drawing, as far as I can 
earn, was made at ‘ime. The original specimen is in the Kew 
Herbarium, and from it the sporidia are drawn in Dr, Cooke’s 
figure 327, ‘in Myeoamaphia but the figure of the plant which is 
given in that work is derived from another source; the sporidia 
are represented as fusiform, ee the dimensions 82 x 10-12 p . Now, 
* Linn. Trans. xxiv. p. 152, t. 25, fig. 25. 
Journat or Borany.—Vot. 81. [May, 1893.] K 
