The North American Slime-Moulds: A Descriptive List of All Species of Myxomycetes Hitherto Reported from the Continent of North America, with Notes on Some Extra-Limital SpeciesMacbride, Thomas H. (Thomas Huston)
Science
The North American Slime-Moulds: A Descriptive List of All Species of Myxomycetes Hitherto Reported from the Continent of North America, with Notes on Some Extra-Limital Species
Macbride, Thomas H. (Thomas Huston)
Myxomycetes
The didermas are generally delicately beautiful. The outer wall in the
present species is like finest unglazed china, softly smooth, and yet
not polished, often absolutely white, with porcellanous fracture. An
inter-parietal space separates the outer from the inner wall, so that
the former may be broken, bit by bit, without in the least disturbing
the underlying structure. The inner wall is ashen or gauzy iridescent
green, sending back all colors in reflected light. The spores are
violet, deeply so when fresh, the capillitium strong and likewise
tinted; the columella passing down and blending with the common
snow-white hypothalline base. The distinct habits of the two species are
represented in Figs. 5 and 7. In the one the distinct sporangia are
associated but not crowded; in the other all are massed together in
quite aethalioid fashion, forming circumambient, chalky masses of
considerable size, 2 or 3 cm., overcrowded, superimposed, where the
sporangia are regular in shape and size by reason of mutual pressure.
The plasmodium develops in forests and orchards, among decaying leaves,
but is inclined to rise as maturity draws near, to ascend some twig
erect, or the stem of a living plant to the height of several inches
where the sporangia at length appear "heaped and pent", an encircling
sheath, conspicuous after the fashion of a spumaria for which it is
indeed sometimes mistaken.
6. DIDERMA LYALLII (_Massee_) _Macbr._
PLATE XVIII., Figs. 5 and 5 _a_
1892. _Chondrioderma lyallii_ Massee, _Mon._, p. 201.
1894. _Chondrioderma lyallii_ Mass., List., _Mycetozoa_, p. 81.
1899. _Diderma lyallii_ Mass., Macbr., _N. A. S._, p. 99.
1911. _Diderma lyallii_ List., sub-species, _Mycetozoa, 2nd ed._,
p. 105.
Sporangia obovate, more or less closely crowded, white, stipitate, about
1 mm. in diameter, the outer peridium firm, stout, encrusted, especially
above, with granular masses of lime, the inner well developed, more or
less cartilaginous, opaque, yellow or buff-colored; hypothallus well
developed, venulose, white, passing up unchanged to form the short,
stout stipe and lower outer peridium; columella prominent, half the
height of the sporangium, brown; capillitium of short, brown threads,
rigid, much branched, forming a net, widened irregularly and especially
at the net-nodes; spore-mass black, spores by transmitted light bright
brown, rough, 15-17 mu.
A very distinct species; large, fine, showy sporangia in more or less
crowded clusters spring from a snow-white, common hypothallus. First
reported from western Canada. Our first specimens were collected by the
late Mr. Charles Irish, on the eastern slopes of the Sierras, in Nevada;
now coming in abundantly from all the western mountains to the Pacific.
7. DIDERMA TESTACEUM (_Schrad._) _Pers._
PLATE VII., 4, 4 _a_, and 4 _b_.
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