Grows where almost nothing else will, and where I have despaired of finding a meal of fungi, I could always find the ubiquitous L. pusillum.
L. oblongi´sporum B. and C.—oblong-spored. Peridium subglobose, with a slender mycelial cord. Cortex a thin, whitish, furfuraceous coat, drying up into minute persistent granules on the pale-brown surface of the inner peridium. Subgleba nearly obsolete; mass of spores and capillitium olivaceous, then brown; threads much branched, the main stem about as thick as the spores, the branches tapering. Spores elliptic, even, 5–6×3–4µ, sometimes with a minute pedicel.
Growing on the ground in dense woods. Wisconsin, Trelease. Peridium ⅜-1 in. in diameter. This pretty species, previously known only from Cuba, is indistinguishable from L. pusillum when immature, the spores affording the only really characteristic feature. Morgan.
Lycoperdon
cepæsforme.
(After Morgan.)
L. cepæsfor´me Bull.—onion-shaped. Peridium globose or depressed-globose, plicate underneath, with a cordlike root. Cortex at first a thin, white, minutely furfuraceous coat, this soon becomes rimulose and at length breaks up into small scales and patches, which finally disappear from the pale or pale-brown surface of the inner peridium. Subgleba nearly obsolete; mass of spores and capillitium greenish-yellow, then pale-olivaceous; the threads very much branched, the main stem thicker than the spores, the branches long and tapering. Spores globose, even, 3.5–4µ in diameter, often with a minute pedicel.
Peridium ½-1 in. in diameter.
Growing on the ground in meadows and pastures.
New York, Peck, 51st Rep.