Hirneola auricula-Judea.
About two-thirds nat. size.
H. auri´cula—Jude´a (Linn.) Berk.—Jew’s ear. 1–4 in. across, thin, and flexible when moist, hard when dry, date-brown or blackish. Hymenium venoso-plicate (vein-plaited), forming irregular depressions such as are in the ear, yellowish-gray or grayish beneath and hairy. The large depressions or corrugations branch from smaller ones near the center of the plant.
Spores 20–25×7–9µ Massee.
H. auricula-Judea is not very particular in the trees it patronizes. Elm, maple, hickory, balsam-fir, spruce, alder bear it. When the plant grows on upright timber it usually turns upward. It is not generally reported in the United States.
Ohio, Maryland, Miss Banning; Indiana, H.I. Miller; New York, Peck; New Jersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, McIlvaine. Extensively used in China, where eating it probably antedates all European records by several thousand years. It is brought there dried from Tahiti in great quantities and made into soup.
The writer has found and eaten several specimens of it. It is not as tender as other gelatinous species, but it is an oddity that pleases.
Sub-Family—Tremellineæ.
TREMEL´LA Dill.
Tremo—to tremble.
Distended with jelly when moist, tremulous, without a defined margin and without nipple-like elevations. Spore-bearing processes globose, becoming divided into four parts, each division producing an elongated free point terminating in a simple spore. Fries.