May 1903] Genus Sarcosoma in North America. 
103 
1834. Exsicc. Ellis, N. A. F. no. 449; Ravenel, Fung. Car. fasc. 
no. 23. 
Plants solitary or crowded on the branch, stipitate; when 
young very small, ovate-cylindrical, closed, the apex warty, soon 
opening exposing the very small disk, the whole plant then in¬ 
creasing greatly in size until maturity when the disk is saucer¬ 
shaped or plane, 3-6 cm. in diam., tawny-ochraceous, margin 
thin, crenate; stem turbinate, 2-3 cm. long, 2 cm. thick above, 
narrowed below to a small point of attachment, the whole ex¬ 
terior covered with a thin, appressed, blackish-brown tomentum, 
more or less wrinkled or rugose; consistency watery-gelatinous. 
When dry much shrunken, horny and brittle, externally deeply 
wrinkled, and the disk usually changed to a dull grayish-black 
excipulum of very slender hyphae passing at the surface into a 
thin cortex of rounded brown cells 10 /* diam. Asci narrowly 
cylindrical, apex truncate-rounded, not blue with iodine, 300-350 
xi2 a; spores 8, uniseriate, hyaline, or with a pale yellowish tint, 
smooth, continuous, eguttulate, narrowly elliptical, 18-25 x 8-12 /* 
(the majority 20x10/'.); paraphyses filiform, hyaline, septate, 
branched, apices very little thickened, not cohering. 
On fallen, half-buried branches usually of oak, among leaves, 
June to August, common. Maine (Harvey) ; Mass. (Sprague) ; 
N. York (various col.) ; Penn, (various col.) ; N. Carolina (Cur¬ 
tis) ; Ohio (Morgan, James). The species will probably be 
found in all the States east of the Mississippi. 
In the tpye, in herb. Schweinitz, the spores are narrowly ellip¬ 
tical, 20-25 x 8-10 [x . 
Sarcosoma carolinianum Durand sp. nov.— Plants soli¬ 
tary, sessile, attached by a dark brown tomentum; at first closed, 
then opening by a pore at the apex, expanding and enlarging 
finally becoming saucer-shaped, up to 4 cm. diam. Disk tawny- 
ochraceous, externally brown, covered with a thick, appressed, 
brown tomentum, threads very long 7-8 /* thick, septate, rather 
shining, but little wrinkled; substance tough-gelatinous, not at all 
watery, so that the plant nearly retains its shape, size and color 
when dry. Consistency of the dry plant corky, not horny and 
brittle, and exterior nearly even. Flesh white, excipulum com¬ 
posed entirely of interwoven hyphae which are thick and septate, 
5-6 fx diam. Asci clavate-cylindrical, narrowed below to a long, 
slender pedicel, apex rounded, not blue with iodine, 400-450 x 
18 [x, opening by a lid. Spores 8, uniseriate, hyaline, smooth, 
continuous, elliptical, 25-30x15 /* (the majority 28x15/*); 
Paraphyses cylindrical, hyaline, septate, very little thickened at 
the free tips, 3 /* thick. 
Attached to dead sticks, among leaves, on damp wooded 
slopes, alt. 3,500 ft., Blowing Rock, N. Carolina, Aug. and Sept., 
1899, G- F. Atkinson (C. U. Herb. no. 4363) ; 1901, E. J. Durand 
(C. U. Herb. no. 12279). 
