CALICIUM. 



257 



Genus I. CALICIUM, Pers. 



Gen. Char. .Apothecium stipitate, rarely sessile or substipitate, 

 concave, flattened or lentiform. Exciple carbonaceous, orbicular, 

 flat or turbinate.* (Name probably from calix, a goblet, in allu- 

 sion to the form of the apothecia.) 



The species of this family are almost peculiar to dead 

 wood, and are distinguished by the filiform or hair-like stalk 

 which supports the button-like or globose fruit. The thal- 

 lus is usually leprose, whitish, granulose, sometimes , obso- 

 lete; one species, C. tigillare, is distinguished by its con- 

 tinuous, thickish, green thallus. In respect to its fructifica- 

 tion, this genus closely resembles Sj)7icerophoron. In both, 

 the spores accumulate on the surface of the thalamium, 

 forming, along with the debris of their thecse and proto- 

 plasm, the chief elements of the blackish dust which covers 

 the apothecium. In both, the spores are generally agglome- 

 rated in linear series by means of a viscid protoplasm ; and, 

 as they appear destitute of any thecal covering, except infe- 

 riorly, where the theca is found as a tapering filiform pedicle, 



# Fresenius, on this genus, in ' Regensburger Flora/ 1848, and in Bayr- 

 hoffer's Uebersicht der Moose : Lebermoose mid Flechten des Taunus, 1849 ; 

 De Notaris, Frammenti Lichenografici di un lavoro inedito, ' Abbozzo di una 

 nuova disposizione delle Caliciee,' Giorn. Bot. Ital. Ann. 2. 



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