Beardslee: Asheville Fungi 



31 



varying gray, becoming azure-blue." Judging from this, the 

 color would hardly be an insuperable barrier. 



Our plant is at all events a very striking and distinct species 

 and we should have some name for it. Personally, I shall prefer 

 to call it Mycena stylobates, but at any rate it is too distinct and 

 interesting to be excluded from our flora. 



Mycena Iris Berk, seems also to occur here. I find at Asheville 

 specimens which do not seem to differ from specimens of Berke- 

 ley's species which were found in Sweden. The group of forms 

 which are to be found at Asheville with blue mycelium at the base 

 of the stipe is very perplexing, and I have found my views as to 

 the number of species which can be recognized changing. I find, 

 however, a form, often growing on the ground which has seemed 

 to me M. Iris. It is fairly large, 12-16 mm. and has the margin 

 of the pileus clothed with curious blue fibrils, which are closely 

 glued down to the surface of the pileus and give it a very distinct 

 appearance. These fibrils seem to be largely lacking in the 

 smaller forms which are found growing on logs, but are quite 

 plain in the European plant. Whether we have more than one 

 species in this group has seemed uncertain to me. In this con- 

 nection it may be noted that Bresadola, early in Fungi Tridentini 

 describes Mycena calorhiza with blue mycelium, but later on de- 

 cides it to be a form of Mycena Iris. Evidently the same per- 

 plexing forms with blue mycelium occur in Europe. 



Omphalia strombodes Berk. & Mont, is another species which 

 seems to need attention. As it is described, it has the spores 

 "subglobose 4-5/* long." An European species has been de- 

 scribed and figured by Bresadola as Clitocybe xanthophylla, after- 

 ward transferred to Omphalia. This agrees well with our plant 

 in form, but is, as Bresadola writes me, distinct from the species 

 described by Morgan in its spores. These he describes as subo- 

 vate and pointed at one end, 7-8 X 4-5 This would seem in 

 these days ample difference for specific distinction. 



The difficulty which I find in regard to the plant that occurs in 

 North Carolina is that it agrees rather with Bresadola's descrip- 

 tion than with Morgan's. I have this summer examined about 



