A New Type of Spermogonium and Fertilization 
in Collema. 
BY 
FREDA M. BACHMANN. 
With Plate LXIX. 
HE question as to the true nature of the so-called spermatia in Lichens, 
X many Pyrenomycetes, Rusts, &c., connected as it is with the general 
question of functional sexuality in the Ascomycetes, still remains an open 
one in the minds of some students of the Fungi. 1 I have undertaken 
further studies on the Collemaceae with a view to throwing light on both 
these problems. 
What Tulasne has called the spermogonia of Lichens were thought by 
Fries (15) to be aborted apothecia. Flotow (14), a few decades later, 
describes them as perithecia without asci or paraphyses and containing only 
atom-like sporidia. Itzigsohn (21) believed the spermatia were motile and 
similar to the male cells of P oly trichum and M archantia , hence he called 
them spermatozoids and called the spermogonia antheridia. A few months 
later, in a second paper (22), he confirms his earlier observations, but also 
adds that Rabenhorst and Kiitzing had written him of their failure to see any 
movement of these small cells, and that Flotow had observed a movement 
of the cells but, finding the same in material which had been in the herbarium 
for twenty years, had concluded that it was only a molecular movement. 
A year later, in a letter to Itzigsohn (23), Rabenhorst writes that he saw 
such a movement as had been described by Itzigsohn. 
Tulasne (35), failing to see any resemblance between these flask-shaped 
filamentous structures in Lichens and the^antheridia of Mosses and Hepatics, 
and not finding their contents motile, proposed to call them spermogonia 
and the small cells produced in them and set free through the ostiole 
spermatia. He figured the spermogonia and spermatia for about fifty 
1 Klebahn, H. : Die wirtswechselnden Rostpilze. Berlin, 1904. Bitter, Georg: Zur Morphcl. 
u. Systematik v. Parmelia , Untergattung Hypogymnia. Hedwigia, xl, 1901, pp. 171-274. 
[Annals of Botany, Vol. XXVI. No. CIII. July, 1912.] 
