Sturgis: Myxomycetes from South America 
37 
Diderma simplex (Schroet.) List. Punta Arenas, Chile, Feb- 
ruary, 1906. This is a single very large gathering consisting of 
thousands of closely crowded, sessile sporangia of a pale ochra- 
ceous-brown or tawny color, almost completely covering a mixed 
substratum of moss, dead leaves and twigs. A specimen sub- 
mitted to Miss Lister was determined by her as above. 
Diderma Trevelyani (Grev.) Fr. Punta Arenas, Chile, 
February, 1906. As compared with numerous gatherings of this 
species made in the United States, this Chilean specimen shows 
a remarkable divergence in the size of the sporangia. These 
measure 1.5 mm. or more in diameter. In other respects, how- 
ever, they are thoroughly characteristic of the species. 
Diderma Antarctica (Speg.) Sturgis. Punta Arenas, Chile, 
January, 1906. In 1887 Spegazzini^^ described as “ad truncos 
cariosus Fagi antarcticae in silvis prope Punta Arenas,” a species 
to which he gave the name Licea antarctica. This species. Miss 
Lister (Mon. iMycet., p. 264) refers doubtfully to Perichaena cor- 
ticalis Rost. I have not seen the type of Spegazzini’s species, but 
the published description makes it quite evident that it does not 
refer to a species of Licea, since it includes a distinct capillitium. 
The gathering made by Professor Thaxter and here recorded, 
consists of groups of ten to fifty or more closely aggregated, ses- 
sile sporangia, subglobose or angled by mutual pressure and with 
smooth walls of a dark reddish brown color. The thick wall, 
brittle above, persistent and cartilaginous below, is closely lined 
throughout with a delicate membranous layer densely beset with 
minute, snow-white granules of lime. The columella is a rough, 
indeterminate, calcareous mass of a pale yellow color. The cap- 
illitium consists normally of scanty, coarse or .slender threads, 
dark in the middle, hyaline ^t the extremities ; occasionally of 
large, pale-brown, membranous, angular expansions, from which 
the threads radiate. The spores, black in the mass, are dark 
purplish-brown, paler on one side, minutely spinulose and often 
marked with one or more raised bands, and measure 10.5-11.5/A 
in diameter. That this description coincides very closely with 
that of Licea antarctica there can be no doubt. The probability 
that the two gatherings represent one and the same species is 
11 Fungi Patagonici. In Bol. Acad. Nac. Ciencias, Cordoba, ii : 56. 
