Lloyd Mycological Writings V3.pdf - MykoWeb

and core and the pores are of a uniform color (snuff brown, [303] ) and
of a hard, sub-woody texture. The pores are minute, with darker
mouths. This curious growth is rather rare in the central, western,
and southern United States. It seems to be absent from the Eastern
States, and I believe that Professor Peck has never recorded it from
New York. I have never seen it growing fresh, though I have specimens
from a half dozen correspondents. When fresh it is said to exhale
a strong odor, and is known to the natives as ''sweet-knot." I have
been told that they can detect it at a distance by its odor. Schweinitz
named it graveolens, and stated it has a strong sub-nauseous odor.
That hardly carries out the native name. At any rate the odor disappears
from dried specimens, and is contrary to the usual nature
of fragrant fungi, for the odoriferous principle as a rule gets stronger
with age. Around Cincinnati Fomes graveolens grows usually on
beech. 23
Schweinitz's original reference was on oak, and Ravenel distributed
it from the oak. The plant, though rare, is well known to
most American mycologists, and was recently illustrated by Kellerman,
and also by Hard. 24 A little bit of unwritten history came to light on
my last visit to Paris. Stuck away in a closet I found one day the type
of Polyporus botryoides, as named by Leveille, from this specimen
that he found in the Museum "Patria incog." It is typically Fomes
graveolens, and I knew it as soon as I saw it. For sixty years it has
been kept in the museum, and no one had ever recognized it.- 5
POLYPORUS POCULA (Figs. 369, 370, and 371). This is
the smallest Polyporus known, and it was many years before it was
known to be a Polyporus at all. It grows erumpent from the bark of
various trees, and is particularly partial to the chestnut oak, though it
has been found on hickory, sumac, ash, cherry, etc. It has a short,
curving stem, which is black at the base. Surface smooth, brown,
powdery. The pore surface is a disk, always turned toward the ground,
and about 3 mm. in diameter when expanded. In drying it shrinks
and becomes somewhat cup-shaped. The context is white, tough, but
soft when moist, brittle and harder when dry. The pores are very
small (about 120 mic.) and from 400 to 520 mic. ( l/2 mm.) deep. The
mouths are almost hidden by a layer of minute, encrusted, hyaline
hairs, usually described as pruinose. 26
Spores (teste Cooke) globose,
hyaline, smooth, 4 mic.
23 This plant, which Berkeley received from Lea, Ohio, he called Polyporus conglobatus,
but he afterward corrected it, at least Ravenel did, probably at Berkeley's direction.
24 Hard, or probably the printer, got his figure upside down.
23 Polyporus botryoides passes in our literature as a "Polyporus," not even in the same
genus as Fomes graveolens. No one has ever suspected from our literature that it had the
most remote relation to Fomes graveolens, and yet it is this same very peculiar species. It
is an illustration of the value of the usual fungus "literature" and "description."
26 "Peziza. The disk is covered with a brown powder and appears minutely punctate.
After soaking in water the mouths of open tubes are very perceptible. They lie compactly to-
are very long (or deep), and quite tough. They may be asci. If this is not a Peziza,
nher, o not know where to place it. It is not Polyporus or Ascobolus." Lea's original note to
Berkeley.
Which shows Lea to have been a very observing man. Had it not been that the mouths
of the tubes are masked by a "brown powder," I do not question but that Lea would have
recognized it as a Polyporus.
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