A puff-ball of moderate size, growing in fields and open woods. Morgan.
B. Ohien´sis Ellis and Morg. Peridium globose or broadly obovoid, sometimes much depressed, plicate underneath, with a thick cord-like root. Cortex a dense floccose coat, sometimes segregated into soft warts or spines, white or grayish in color; this dries up into a thick buff-colored or dirty ochraceous layer, which gradually falls away, leaving a smooth, shining, pale-brown or yellowish surface to the inner peridium. Subgleba broad, ample, occupying one-half the peridium, a long time persistent; mass of spores and capillitium lax, friable, clay-color to pale-brown; the threads .6-.8 mm. in extent, three to five times branched, the main stem 6–8µ in thickness, the branches tapering. Spores globose or oval, even, 4–5µ in length by 3.5–4µ in breadth, with long hyaline persistent pedicels.
Bovistella Ohiensis.
Natural size.
Growing on the ground in old pastures, in fields and open woods. Morgan.
This species of puff-ball is made the type of the new genus Bovistella by Mr. Morgan.
GENUS XI.—CATAS´TOMA Morg.
Puff-balls growing just beneath the surface of the ground and connected immediately with it by filamentous threads, which issue from every part of the cortex; after maturity, when the peridium breaks away, the lower part of the outer coat is held fast by the soil, while the upper portion which has attained the surface remains, covering the inner peridium like a cap or inverted cup; consequently the apparent apex at which the mouth is situated is the actual base of the plant as it grows. The capillitium threads are similar to the densely interwoven hyphæ, which form the inner peridium and are evidently branches of them radiating from the interior. It is plain that the affinities of these plants are closest with Tylostoma and Astræus, but the needs of a systematic arrangement, according to more obvious characters, causes us to place them next to Bovista. Morgan.