112 
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF BOTANY 
[Vol. 8 
times from miscellaneous foodstuffs, especially the cereals both as whole 
grain and as milled products, and more recently have been found abundantly 
in the soy-bean fermentation products of China and Japan. 
Members of this series have been reported in the study of infections 
in the human ear. Certain of these forms have produced lesions and death 
when injected into experimental animals. Costantin and Lucet^^ review 
the literature of such pathogenicity and offer a key to species based upon 
their review of injection experiments with rabbits and fowls. The structural 
characters cited by them represent fairly well the range of variation within 
the group. Sclerotium formation is used to separate A . flavus, attributed 
by them to Wilhelm, from the other forms. In our experience sclerotium 
formation is not limited to any morphological section of the group. More- 
over, A. Wehmeri of Costantin and Lucet is a manuscript species based 
upon A. flavus of Wehmer's monograph. It was not studied by them in 
culture. Both Wilhelm and Wehmer based their use of the name upon 
the usage of Brefeld as determined by examination of the same cultural 
material distributed by Rabenhorst.^'^ We have seen this material, and it 
corresponds satisfactorily with the characters given by Wilhelm and 
Wehmer. If the name A. flavus is to be held in the sense of Wilhelm, A 
Wehmeri is clearly a synonym. 
A. flavescens of Wreden^-"" was not cultivated. The size of the spores 
and the coloration of the stalk reported caused us to believe that it belonged 
elsewhere.^^ Wehmer^'^ cites Lichtheim as having compdiY^d A. flavescens 
with A . flavus Link as understood by Brefeld and having found them identi- 
cal. Lichtheim, however, uses the name as interpreted by Eidam, which 
is probably but not necessarily identical with the usage of Wreden. Certain 
organisms from ulcerated ears clearly belonged to this series. The mor- 
phology given by Costantin and Lucet for A. Siehenmanni and A. micro- 
virido-citrinus is not uncommon in cultures from the group except as to 
color. It will be shown later that the green factor in colony color is sup- 
pressed when fermentable carbohydrates are omitted from the substratum. 
The range of morphology cited by Costantin and Lucet was assumed by 
them to establish a presumption of pathogenicity to warm-blooded animals 
for the whole group. The infection experiments reported from different 
sources were intravenous with positive lesions. It is noteworthy that they 
found their A. oryzae var. basidiferens^^ to be pathogenic also to the 
rabbit by the same kind of inoculation. This is consistent with a common 
morphology in A. flavus and A. oryzae as considered in this paper. Double 
sterigmata, used by Costantin and Lucet as varietal characters, are not 
33 Loc. cit., pp. 1 51-163. 
s^Loc. ci^., no. 2135. 1876. 
35Compt. Rend. Acad. Sci. P^ris 65: 368. 1867. 
36 Thorn, C, and Church, M. B. Amer. Jour. Bot. 5: 100. 1918. 
37 Wehmer, C. Centralbl. Bakt. II, 2: 148. 1896. 
38 Loc. cit., p. 167. 
