BRIEFER ARIICLES 
A NEW WOOD-DESTROYING FUNGUS. 
(WITH SIX FIGURES) 
A very interesting polypore was sent to Professor ATKINSON at the 
botanical laboratory of Cornell University during the winter of 1912-13. 
The plant, collected by Dr. F. A. WorF at the Alabama Polytechnic Insti- 
tute,was found growing on some of the woodwork in the engineering build- 
ing, where it was apparently causing considerable damage. A stairway 
and floor situated near water pipes were so badly rotted that it was neces- 
sary to replace them, and the wainscoting under the steps was entirely 
covered with a layer of mycelium, which was at first yellow and later 
dark brown. An examination showed that the mycelium was growing 
through the wood and also over the exposed surfaces, where it produced 
a soft papery layer of pale umbrinous color which could be easily sepa- 
rated from the substratum. In manner of growth and the appearance of 
the mycelium, the plant resembles Merulius lacrymans, but instead of the 
hymenophore being composed of the vermiform, anastomosing folds of 
that genus, a stratum of dark fuligineous pores was formed (figs. 1-3). 
The tubes were very fragile and friable when dry, the condition in which 
the fungus was found. A microscopic examination showed that the 
color of the tubes was almost entirely due to the very numerous dark 
brown spores which filled the pores and were often massed on the sur- 
rounding mycelium. The trama of the pores and the subiculum on which 
they were formed were composed of pale umbrinous hyphae (figs. 4, 5). 
The wood on which the fungus was growing was in advanced stages 
of decay, of a dark brown color and checked into small cubes. Much of 
it could be crumbled between the fingers, and when sections were cut the 
spring wood separated from the summer wood. A part of the wood was 
bald cypress (Taxodium distichum) and a part long leaf pine (Pinus 
palustris). Strange to say, in the cypress the late or summer wood, 
which is more resinous, was more badly decayed than the spring wood, 
which in some places remained quite firm. The reverse was true in the 
pine; the spring wood in some instances was reduced almost to a powder, 
while the summer wood remained intact. All attempts to germinate the 
spores or to get a culture from the mycelium in the wood failed, so that 
no work with pure cultures, to find the action of the fungus on the wood 
or to determine with certainty that it was responsible for the decay 
present, was possible. 
397] [Botanical Gazette, vol. 55 
