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lucent, pallid-cinereous to buffy-cinereous above or 
in old specimens sometimes dark and nearly gla¬ 
brous, below purplish-black to slaty-black, con¬ 
tracted and usually considerably wrinkled; in sec¬ 
tion composed of a hymenial layer about 70 a* 
thick, a medullary layer about 700 a* thick, and a 
compact dorsal layer about 20 thick underlying 
the tomentum; hymenial layer consisting of 
densely compacted basidia, of paraphyses 1.5-2 v* 
in diameter with brownish branching indistinct 
tips exceeding the basidia and forming a dense 
continuous superficial layer, and of slender con¬ 
torted subhymenial hyphae; medullary layer of 
rather loosely arranged hyphae with irregular 
often open clamps and confluent, highly gelatin¬ 
ized walls, apparently 2-3 M in diameter but much 
thicker if the limits of the walls could be observed, 
mostly parallel to the surface in the middle and 
perpendicular in the upper and lower quarter; 
dorsal layer consisting of an inner colorless half 
of heavily stainable hyphae 1 At in diameter, 
densely compacted, perpendicular to the surface, 
and with little gelatinized wall material between, 
and an outer pigmented layer abundantly pene¬ 
trated by the bases of the surface hairs; hairs up 
to 225 X 4.5-7 /*, thick-walled and aggregated in 
conical tufts; basidia linear or slightly clavate, 
40-50 X 4.5-5 A*, 3-septate; spores allantoid, 
15.5-17 X 4.5-5.5 A*. 
In the Marshalls usually on wood of Cocos 
nucifera, with one collection on Artocarpus 
menus. Wotje: Ormed I., 1353, 1354, 
1379, 1383; Namu: Namu I., 1404, 1414, 
1434; Ebon, 1338. 
A thin, leathery, often ear-like basidio- 
carp, pilose and ashy to nearly glabrous and 
brownish-black above, and rosy to purplish- 
black below. The most abundant growth 
was encountered on Ormed, where large 
clusters had developed on standing dead 
trunks of coco palms, many of which had 
been topped by the blockaded Japanese gar¬ 
rison for their edible terminal buds, while 
others had been cut by artillery fire or bomb- 
blast. The Marshallese name, "lajiling kiji- 
lik” (rat’s ear), is applied without much 
discrimination to many bracket- or ear-like 
or even stipitate Basidiomycetes—polypores, 
Pleurotus, and others—but there was some 
suggestion that this species is the true rat’s 
ear, and on Ormed the name was given only 
to this Auricularia. Strangely enough, it is 
not eaten in the Marshalls, whereas in 
Hawaii the same species, under the name 
"pepeiaoakua” (ghost ear) is regarded, not 
mistakenly, as good food. 
Persoon’s description [loc. cit.) reads as 
follows: 
Afuricularia] magna resupinata substipitata, 
inferne pubescens lutescente-grisea, superne laevis 
nigricans. Pers. 
In insulis Mariannis inque Moluccis. 
Pour la configuration et la couleur, cette espece 
ressemble beaucoup a Vauricularia sambuci [i.e., 
A. auricularis (S. F. Gray) Martin, Amer. Mid¬ 
land Nat. 30: 81, 1943]; mais elle s’en distingue 
par sa partie fertile, qui n’est presque pas veineuse, 
et parce qu’elle pousse en-dessous une sorte de 
stipes ou appendice long de quelques lignes. A ces 
caracteres, il faut ajouter Vhabitat, qui pourtant 
ne doit pas avoir indue sur la forme et la dimen¬ 
sion? P. 
In this there is, first of all, an obvious error: 
the description has the basidiocarp inverted; 
it is not pubescent below, but above. (It 
may be noted that Fries and succeeding gen¬ 
erations of mycologists made the same mis¬ 
take for all species which, like this, were 
placed in the. genus Hirneola. See Fries 
\loc. cit.'], p. 144; and 1825: 93.) The 
presence of a stipe, furthermore, is here no 
more than fortuitous; it is not a discrete 
structure, but an indistinct prolongation of 
the basidiocarp, and probably no more than 
an occasional response to the position of the 
latter, or to such an external condition as 
development through a fissure in the bark. 
The same development occurs in northern 
specimens of A. auricularis. Neither is the 
configuration of the hymenium a constant 
character; among the numerous collections 
at hand some are quite smooth, and others as 
venulose, and as ear-like in their convolu¬ 
tions, as any specimen of A. auricularis. The 
word "resupinata” need not be misleading 
if it be noted that Persoon (1822: 97) uses 
the same adjective in describing the familiar 
northern A. auricularis. What is left, then, 
of Persoon’s account is a description of a 
large species of Auricularia, yellowish-gray- 
pubescent above, blackish below, greatly re¬ 
sembling A. auricularis, and occurring from 
