Compound or stromatoid fructifications occur once and again in lichen families; but, according to Wainio[985], there is no true stroma formation, only a pseudostroma resulting from adhesions and agglomerations of the thalline envelopes or from cohesions of the margins of developing fruit bodies. These pseudostromata are present in the genera _Chiodecton_ and _Glyphis_ (Graphidineae) and in _Trypethelium_, _Mycoporium_, etc. (Pyrenocarpineae). This view of the nature of the compound fruits is strengthened, as Wainio points out, by the presence in certain species of single apothecia or perithecia on the same specimen as the stromatoid fruits. _b._ CONIOCARPINEAE. This subseries is entirely isolated. Its peculiarity lies in the character of the mature fruit in which the spores, owing to the early breaking down of the asci, lie as a loose mass in the hymenium, while dispersal is delayed for an indefinite time. This type of fruit, termed a _mazaedium_ by Acharius, is in the form of a stalked or sessile roundish head—the capitulum—closed at first and only half-open at maturity rarely, as in _Cyphelium_, an exposed disc. There is a suggestion, but only a suggestion, of a similar fructification in the tropical fungus _Camillea_ in which there is sometimes a stalk with one or more perithecia at the tip, and in some species early disintegration of the asci, leaving spore masses[986]. But neither in fungi nor in other lichens is there any obvious connection with Coniocarpineae. In some of the genera the fungus alone forms the stalk and the wall of the capitulum; in others the thallus shares in the fruit-formation growing around it as an amphithecium. The semi-closed fruits point to their affinity with Pyrenolichens, though they are more advanced than these judging from the thalline wall that is present in some genera and also from the half-open disc at maturity. The latter feature has influenced some systematists to classify the whole subseries among Cyclocarpineae. The thallus, as in _Sphaerophorus_, reaches a high degree of fruticose development; in other genera it is crustaceous without any formation of cortex, while in several genera or species it is non-existent, the fruits being parasites on the thalli of other lichens or saprophytes on dead wood, humus, etc. These latter—both parasites and saprophytes—are included by Rehm[987] and others among fungi, which has involved the breaking up of this very distinctive series. Rehm has thus published as Discomycetes the lichen genera _Sphinctrina_, _Cyphelium_, _Coniocybe_, _Acolium_, _Calicium_ and _Stenocybe_, since some or all of their species are regarded by him as fungi.