Page:Journal of botany, British and foreign, Volume 34 (1896).djvu/173

iJEW OR CRITICAL FUNGI. 161 pointed, multiseptate, constricted at the septa, about 200 x 3-5 /a, breaking up into elliptical cells about 10 x 'S'5 {x while still in the ascus ; paraphyses absent. On dead and fallen coriaceous leaves. Brazil, Glaziou, nos. 18806, 18811, 18812). Differs from Hypocrella oxyspora in being larger, and in having the component cells of the spores elliptical, and not apiculately fusiform. Hypocrella oxyspora Mass. Hypophyllous, scattered, stroma cylindric-globose, surrounded at the base by a radiating, more or less floccose extension, 2-3 mm. diameter, apex often slightly depressed, apricot-coloured or bright ochraceous, glabrous, fixed by a central point and readily falling away at maturity ; perithecia few in number, broadly ovate, large, ostiola indicated externally by small depressions ; asci cylindric-fusiform, apex slightly capitate, not coloured blue with iodine, 200-220 x 12 /x ; spores 8 in number, filiform, arranged in a parallel fascicle slightly twisted on its axis, hyaline, multiseptate, much constricted at the septa, ave- raging 150 X 4-5 fx, breaking up into its component cells before leaving the ascus ; the cells vary from being very acutely fusi- form to an almost globose median part abruptly running out at opposite sides into a hair-like apiculus, 18-20 x 4-5 {x ; paraphyses absent. Aschersonia oxyspora Berk. Decad. Fung. no. 463, in Kew Journ. Bot. vi. 205 (1854) ; Sacc. Syll. iii. no. 3221. On the under side of green leaves of some Myrsinea. Lower part of India [Hooker d Thomson). The fungus recorded for Brazil by Berkeley under the name of Aschersonia oxyspora in Journ. Linn. Soc. xv. 394, and in Dec. Fung. no. 615* (Kew Journ. Bot. viii. (1856) ), is Hypocrella ochracea. Superficially resembling Hypocrella discoidea (B. & Br.) Sacc, from Ceylon, but quite distinct from this and every other species in the peculiar shape of the cells into which the spores become broken up. The early breaking up of the spores into their component cells, and the subsequent disappearance of the asci, leaving the broken-up spores free in the perithecia, led Berkeley into the mistake of placing the present species in the genus Aschersonia. In fact, I am almost certain that 1 have seen conidia on the surface of young stromata resembling the cells of the broken-up ascospores in form in the present species. On the other hand, an examination of a portion of Montague's type of Aschersonia taitensis Mont., the species on which the genus Aschersonia was founded, certainly has the young stromata covered with a dense stratum of fusiform spores ; the primordia of perithecia were also very evident in the substance of the stroma, hence in all probability the genus Aschersonia will prove to be nothing more than the conidial form of Hypocrella : but in the event of this being proved, the name Aschersonia should be adopted for the genus, as having priority over Hypocrella. Berkeley's type of Aschersonia oxyspora examined. It will be observed that the microscopic measurements given under the