236 BOTANICAL GAZETTE [MARCH 
and others who have followed him regarded them as belonging to 
Meliola and constituting one of its conidial forms. The question 
is very complex and difficult and reminds one of the old lichen 
arguments. 
_ The undisputed facts are as follows: Meliola possesses a rela- 
tively coarse mycelium characterized by capitate and mucronate 
hyphopodia. This mycelium bears perithecia, sometimes setae. 
Occasional species sometimes have this coarse mycelium densely 
entwined with a very fine mycelium entirely without hyphopodia, 
more pale in color, and different in every way from the first. This 
fine mycelium gives rise to conidiophores, simple or coremioid. To 
all appearances two distinct fungi are present, as was assumed by 
the earlier authors. The ascospores on germination nearly always 
immediately give rise to the typical coarse mycelium. The conidia 
always give rise to the fine mycelium. GAILLARD (Le Genre M eliola, 
1892, pl. 3. fig. 2), however, figures, and I have several times seen, 
ascospores which have germinated by a somewhat finer mycelium 
than usual, one devoid, so far as observed, of hyphopodia. He 
reasons from this that the two types of mycelium are from the same 
parentage, the ascospore, and that therefore the conidia belong to 
Meliola. This variation from the normal mode of germination is 
really all the evidence that he had for this conclusion. 
I believe that this evidence fails completely for two reasons. 
' First, the fine mycelium which GarLiarp figures originating from 
the ascospores and which I have studied closely is not at all like 
the conidiiferous mycelium; it is distinctly coarser, darker (facts 
which come out clearly in GAILLARD’s own pictures; compare his 
pl. 3, figs. 3a and 2a with pl. 4, figs. 3 and rd), and moreover there 
is no evidence whatever that it does produce conidia. I regard it 
merely as a weak Meliola mycelium. Second, I find this abnormal, 
unusual type of germination on species of Meliola which show no 
conidia; notably on M. andirae (cotype slide) and M. rudolphiae 
(specimen no. 8698). These facts, together with a study of more 
than 700 collections, and extensive field and laboratory observa- 
tions of Meliola embracing many of these conidial stages, convince 
me that the fine and the coarse mycelia are from distinct and inde- 
pendent fungi; that the conidia do not belong to Meliola but to a 
