I. 7. THE RED CEDAR. 107 
however, found to have quite a different origin. They make 
their appearance, according to Schweinitz, from whom this ac- 
count is obtained, on the most delicate branches of the cedar, 
of the size of the head of a pin, and gradually increase to the 
diameter of one or two inches, still traversed by the unaltered 
branch. Whilst fresh and young, their substance is like that of 
an unripe apple, and of a whitish green color within. This 
green tint soon changes to a tawny orange, and a few whitish 
fibres are observed radiating and branching from the base. They 
are covered with a bark of a brown purplish lilac color, which is 
Juiceless, like the peel of an apple. The whole surface is dotted 
with small polygonal, usually pentagonal, depressions, which 
are at first plane, afterwards slightly projecting in the centre. 
These projecting centres at last burst, and there issue forth 
from each, in moist weather, slender, gelatinous, strap-like 
“ sporidéchia, about an inch in length, of the most beautiful 
orange color, adorning, in the course of a single spring night, 
the whole tree, as it were, with the richest crop of ripe oranges. 
If wet weather continues for many days, it remains in this state 
till the hgules melt away. Under the influence of the sun, 
however, they soon dry up, and never revive.’ This gelati- 
nous substance is composed of the lengthened sporidia, spore- 
vessels, or seed-vessels, of a mmute fungus, called by Schweinitz 
Podisdma macropus. Dr. J. Wyman has discovered one of these 
fungi so constantly near the lengthened acerose leaves, men- 
tioned above, that he conceives there must be some connexion 
between them, and that the fungus is, perhaps, the cause of the 
peculiarity in the length and shape of the leaf. I believe, how- 
ever, that acerose leaves occur on perfectly healthy branches. 
The cedar apples continue to increase mntil the sporidochia 
burst forth; but after this evolution has taken place, they cease 
to grow, and begin to become hard and dry. ‘They last a year. 
When dry and old, they are of a spongy, fibrous texture, finally 
almost woody, as if formed of fibres radiating from the base.* 
On each of the junipers of Britain a similar fungus is found. 
* See a communication from Dr. J. Wyman, in the forty-second number of the 
London Journal of Botany, with additional remarks by the Rev. M. J. Berkeley. 
