A very beautiful species; not uncommon in the eastern states; rare west of the Mississippi. Easily recognized, amid related forms, by its snow-white stem, a feature which did not escape the notice of Bulliard and suggested the accepted specific name. Fries adopted the specific name proposed by Trentepohl and wrote D. elegans, simply because to him the peridium was "admodum elegans."

The peridium is exceedingly thin and early deciduous; the stipe long persistent. The plasmodium, dull white, was observed by Fries at the beginning of the century; "morphoseos clavem inter myxogastres hoc genus primum mihi subministravit."

This species, as the diachæas generally, affects fallen sticks and leaves in orchards and forests and even spreads boldly over the foliage and stems of living plants.

New England, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, South Carolina, Ohio, Iowa, California, Canada.

2. Diachaea splendens Peck.

[Plate VII.], Figs. 1, 1 a, 1 b, 1 c.

Sporangia gregarious, metallic blue with brilliant iridescence, globose, stipitate; stipe white, short, tapering upward; hypothallus white, venulose, a network supporting the snowy stipes; columella white, cylindric, passing the centre, obtuse; capillitium lax, of slender, anastomosing, brown, translucent threads; spores in mass black, by transmitted light dark-violaceous, very coarsely warted, 7–10 µ.

This is perhaps the most showy species of the list. The globose brilliantly iridescent sporangia are lifted above the substratum on snow-white columnar stalks; these are again joined one to another by the pure white vein-like cords of the reticulate hypothallus. The plasmodium may spread very widely over all sorts of objects that come in the way, dry forest leaves and sticks, or the fruit and foliage of living plants. Closely resembling the preceding, but differing in the globose sporangia, it may be instantly recognized under the lenses by its coarsely papillate spores.

Not common. New York, Pennsylvania, Ontario, Ohio, Iowa, Nebraska.