Fructification æthalioid; the sporangia sometimes poorly defined, intricately associated, borne on a common hypothallus and covered above by a common cortex; the lateral walls variously perforate and incomplete, form a pseudo-capillitium; spores umber or ochraceous.
Key to the Genera of the Reticulariaceæ
| A. Spores umber. | ||
| a. Sporangia wholly indeterminate, their walls much consolidated below, fraying out above into long, slender threads, | 1. Reticularia | |
| b. Sporangia bounded, more or less distinctly, by broad perforate plates throughout | 2. Enteridium | |
| B. Spores ochraceous | 3. Dictydiæthalium | |
1. Reticularia (Bull.) Rost.
- 1791. Reticularia Bulliard, Champ. de la France, p. 95, in part.
- 1873. Reticularia (Bulliard) Rost., Versuch, p. 6.
Plasmodium at first white, then pink, 'ashes of roses,' etc. Sporangia wholly indeterminate or undefined, their walls represented (?) by a spongy mass of so-called capillitium, consisting of membranous plates, branching, anastomosing, vanishing without order or symmetry, generally giving rise at the sides, and especially above, to long slender flexuous threads; outer cortex silvery white; hypothallus distinct, white; spore-mass and threads umber or rusty brown.
A single species,—
1. Reticularia lycoperdon (Bull.) Rost.
[Plate X.], Figs. 7, 7 a; [Plate XII.], Fig. 3.