_c._ SOREDIA AS BUDS. Schwendener[489] has described soredia in the genus _Usnea_ which give rise to new branches. Many of the species in that genus are plentifully sprinkled with the white powdery bodies. A short way back from the apex of the filament the separate soredia show a tendency to apical growth and might be regarded as groups of young plants still attached to the parent branch. One of these developing more quickly pushes the others aside and by continued growth fills up the soredial opening in the cortex with a plug of tissue; finally it forms a complete lateral branch. Schwendener calls them “soredial” branches (Fig. 82) to distinguish them from the others formed in the course of the normal development. B. SORALIA In lichens of foliose and fruticose structure, and in a few crustaceous forms, the soredia are massed together into the compact bodies called soralia, and thus are confined to certain areas of the plant surface. The simpler soralia arise from the gonidial zone below the cortex by the active division of some of the algal cells. The hyphae, interlaced with the green cells, are thin-walled and are, as stated by Wainio[490], still in a meristematic condition; they are thus able readily to branch and to form new filaments which clasp the continually multiplying gonidia. This growth is in an upward or outward direction away from the medulla, and strong mechanical pressure is exerted by the increasing tissue on the overlying cortical layers. Finally the soredia force their way through to the surface at definite points. The cortex is thrown back and forms a margin round the soralium, though shreds of epidermal tissue remain for a time mixed with the powdery granules. _a._ FORM AND OCCURRENCE OF SORALIA. The term “soralium” was first applied only to the highly developed soredial structures considered by Acharius to be secondary apothecia; it is now employed for any circumscribed group of soredia.[491] The soralia vary in size and form and in position, according to the species on which they occur; these characters are constant enough to be of considerable diagnostic value. Within the single genus _Parmelia_, they are to be found as small round dots sprinkled over the surface of _P. dubia_; as elongate furrows irregularly placed on _P. sulcata_; as pearly excrescences at or near the margins of _P. perlata_, and as swollen tubercles at the tips of the lobes of _P. physodes_ (Fig. 83). Their development is strongly influenced and furthered by shade and moisture, and, given such conditions in excess, they may coalesce and cover large patches of the thallus with a powdery coating, though only in those species that would have borne soredia in fairly normal conditions.