Fistulina pallida B. & Rav. (Fistulina firma Pk.)—This rare and interesting species was collected by Mrs. A. M. Hadley, near Manchester, New Hampshire, October, 1898, and was described by Dr. Peck in the Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club, 26: 70, 1899, as Fistulina firma. But two plants were then found, and these were connected at the base. During August and September it was quite common in a small woods near Ithaca, N. Y., and was first collected growing from the roots of a dead oak stump, August 4 (No. 3227 C. U. herbarium), and afterward during October. During September I collected it at Blowing Rock, N. C., in the Blue Ridge mountains, at an elevation of nearly 5000 feet, growing from the roots of a dead white oak tree. It was collected during September, 1899, by Mr. Frank Rathbun at Auburn, N. Y. It was collected by Ravenel in the mountains of South Carolina, around a white oak stump by Peters in Alabama, and was first described by Berkeley in 1872, in Grev. 1: 71, Notices of N. A. F. No. 173. Growing from roots or wood underneath the surface of the ground, the plant has an erect stem, the length of the stem depending on the depth at which the root is buried, just as in the case of Polyporus radicatus, which has a similar habitat. The plants are 5–12 cm. high, the cap is 3–7 cm. broad, and the stem 6–8 mm. in thickness.

Plate 66, Figure 180.—Fistulina pallida. Cap wood-brown to fawn or clay color, tubes and lower part of the stem whitish (natural size). Copyright.

The pileus is wood brown to fawn, clay color or isabelline color. It is nearly semi-circular to reniform in outline, and the margin broadly crenate, or sometimes lobed. The stem is attached at the concave margin, where the cap is auriculate and has a prominent boss or elevation, and bent at right angles with a characteristic curve. The pileus is firm, flexible, tough and fibrous, flesh white. The surface is covered with a fine and dense tomentum. The pileus is 5–8 mm. thick at the base, thinning out toward the margin. The tubes are whitish, 2–3 mm. long and 5–6 in the space of a millimeter. They are very slender, tubular, the mouth somewhat enlarged, the margin of the tubes pale cream color and minutely mealy or furfuraceous, with numerous irregular, roughened threads. The tubes often stand somewhat separated, areas being undeveloped or younger, so that the surface of the under side is not regular. The tubes are not so crowded as is usual in the Fistulina hepatica. They are not decurrent, but end abruptly near the stem. The spores are subglobose, 3 µ in diameter. The stem tapers downward, is whitish below, and near the pileus the color changes rather abruptly to the same tint as the pileus. The stem is sometimes branched, and two or three caps present, or the caps themselves may be joined, as well as the stems, so that occasionally very irregular forms are developed, but there is always the peculiar character of the attachment of the stem to the side of the cap.

Figure [180] is from plants (No 3676, C. U. herbarium) collected at Blowing Rock, N. C., September, 1899. Figures on the colored plate represent this plant.

Polyporus frondosus Fr. Edible.—This plant occurs in both Europe and America, and while not very common seems to be widely distributed. It grows about old stumps or dead trees, from roots, often arising from the roots below the surface of the ground, and also is found on logs. The plant represents a section of the genus Polyporus, in which the body, both the stem and the cap, are very much branched. In this species the stem is stout at the base, but it branches into numerous smaller trunks, which continue to branch until finally the branches terminate in the expanded and leaf-like caps as shown in Figs. [181]–[182]. The plants appear usually during late summer and in the autumn. The species is often found about oak stumps. Some of the specimens are very large, and weigh 10 to 20 pounds, and the mass is sometimes 30 to 60 cm. (1–2 feet) in diameter.

The plant, when young and growing, is quite soft and tender, though it is quite firm. It never becomes very hard, as many of the other species of this family. When mature, insects begin to attack it, and not being tough it soon succumbs to the ravages of insects and decay, as do a number of the softer species of the Polyporaceæ. The caps are very irregular in shape, curved, repand, radiately furrowed, sometimes zoned; gray, or hair-brown in color, with a perceptibly hairy surface, the hairs running in lines on the surface. Sometimes they are quite broad and not so numerous as in Plate 67, and in other plants they are narrow and more numerous, as in Plate 68. The tubes are more or less irregular, whitish, with a yellowish tinge when old. From the under side of the cap they extend down on the stem. When the spores are mature they are sometimes so numerous that they cover the lower caps and the grass for quite a distance around as if with a white powder.