A very singular species, easily recognizable by its long, slender stipes, terminating in exceedingly small spherical sporangia. The colors are obscure, but the striations on the calyculus are violet-tinted, and the reds perhaps predominate elsewhere. "In its scattered and solitary growth, its tall, slender stipes, and relaxed habit it resembles C. microcarpa, in its network it approaches C. tenella, and its spores have the color of the paler form of C. purpurea." So Dr. Rex, l. c. Western forms of the first-named species have much shorter stipes; the network in the specimens before us is unlike that of C. tenella, but resembles that of C. purpurea.
Rare, on very rotten wood, in the forest. New York, Ohio, South Carolina, Ontario.
16. Cribraria cuprea Morgan.
[Plate XVII]., Fig. 7.
- 1893. Cribraria cuprea Morg., Jour. Cin. Soc., p. 16.
Sporangium very small, .33 mm., oval or somewhat obvoid, copper-colored, stipitate, nodding; stipe concolorous or darker below, subulate, curved at the apex, 2–4 times the sporangium; calyculus about one-half the sporangium, finely ribbed and granulose within, the margin nearly even; the net rather rudimentary, the meshes large, triangular or quadrilateral, the nodules also large, flat, concolorous, the threads slender, transparent, with free ends few; spores in mass copper-colored, by transmitted light colorless, smooth, 6–7 µ.
Recognizable by its small size and peculiar color, that of bright copper, although this fades somewhat with age, and the metallic tints are then lacking. Related to the preceding and in specimens having globular sporangia closely resembling it; but the ground color in C. languescens is always darker, and the stipe proportionally much longer. In habit the sporangia are widely scattered, much more than is common in the species of this genus. Miss Lister, 2nd ed. regards this as a var. of No. 15.
Comparatively rare. Before us is one very small colony of sporangia from Iowa, one from Ohio, and a large number from Missouri. If one may judge from the material at hand, the favorite habitat is very rotten basswood, Tilia americana.
2. Dictydium (Schrad.) Rost.
Sporangia distinct, gregarious, globose or depressed-globose, stipitate, cernuous; the peridium very delicate, evanescent, thickened on the inside by numerous meridional costæ which are joined at frequent intervals by fine transverse threads more or less parallel to each other, forming a persistent network of rectangular meshes.