Catalogue of the plants collected by Mr. & Mrs. P.A. Talbot in the Oban district, South Nigeria / by A.B. Rendle [and others].

  • Alfred Barton Rendle
Date:
1913
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Catalogue of the plants collected by Mr. & Mrs. P.A. Talbot in the Oban district, South Nigeria / by A.B. Rendle [and others]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    is Rumphius’ Tuher-regium, and also that it is the one described by Hennings. There are, however, one or two facts which may be added to Hennings’ description. The squamules which are present in such quantity on the young pileus do not later disappear. Owing to the expansion of the pileus they become widely dispersed and smaller, but in the largest specimen in the collection with a pileus 24 cm. across the squamules can still be clearly seen. The gills bifurcate at the base and undergo further divisions and anastomoses, but the exact procedure has not been made out. The greatest length of stipe is 13 cm., the greatest width 2'5 cm., and the greatest height of a fungus, excluding the sclerotium, 28 cm. The felt of the stipes (which has quite disappeared from the oldest specimens) is usually a dirty fawn colour. Hennings describes it as “ weiss.” In a spirit specimen, the colour is in places much darker, the upper parts of the stipes having dark squamule-like patches while the bases are almost black. The stipe is usually equal but sometimes attenuate upwards. In the case of the complete sclerotium, the surface is very uneven ; on the projecting areas the colour is usually dark brown or black ; where hollows occur the surface is clothed with a felt which is similar in appearance^ to that on the stipe. On the upper surface of the sclerotium there are some adhering wood fibres which may be of significance with regard to the habitat. In section the sclerotium has a white chalky appearance. In 1891 Cohn and Schroeter (in Abhandl. Naturvv. Verein Hamburg xi. 4) described a new species of Lentinus, L. Woer- manni, which they had succeeded in growing from a sclerotium also obtained from the Cameroons. Their figures of the fungus resemble greatly the stage of L. Tuher-regium shown in fig. 2. The only point of distinction is the colour of the stipe which is almost black, but, as stated above, one of the specimens of the present collection, preserved in spirit, bears three fruiting bodies with very dark stipes. The resemblance between the two fungi extends to the microscopic structure. In neither case have spores attached to the basidia been demonstrated. The hyphae of the trama in L. Woermanni were about “2 mm.” [2 /x] broad and thick-walled. In the specimens of L. Tuher-regium examined they are 2-3 g. wide; the club-shaped basidia are a little longer and measure 3-4 /x across. The cystidia, as in L. Woermanni, are usually merely a little longer and wider than the basidia, but at times they project I’ather more above the hymenium; the greatest width measured was 7 /x. The shape of the cystidia is however quite charactei’istic and agrees exactly with Schroeter’s description, “ am Scheitel kegelformig zugespitzte Cystiden, an deren Scheitel sich kleine, etwa 2 mm. [2 /x] breite kugelformige farblose Zellen bildeten, die sich schliesslich abgliederten.”