Mycological Notes. II

Abstract

Among the distinctive characters of this genus, the author mentions especially the membranous perithecia lying nearly free in the locules of the stroma, and says the characters of the genus were taken from Hypoxylon nummulariu m Bull., and Sphaeria discreta Schw., which should be considered the types of the As he specifies two species as types, a choice must be made for nomenclatorial purposes. The first species described is N. Bulliardi based on Hypoxylon nuimnmularium Bull. It is clear from this that he took the generic name from Bulliard's specific name, and as this is the first species described and also represents the group for which Nummularia, when treated as a separate genus, has most generally been used by subsequent writers, it would seem in the interests of uniformity and stability of generic names to apply the name to N. Bulliardi and its congeneric species. If we accept the opinion that this species has no characters sufficient to separate it from Hypoxylon, it would be included as a synonym of that genus. Miller (Trans. Brit. Myc. Soc. 17: 131. 1932) has proposed to take as the type Nummularia discreta (Schw.) Tul. and include Bolinia (Nits.) Sacc., 1882 as a synonym. Of course N. discreta is usually separated from Hypoxylon, but is very clearly closely related to it. Saccardo referred N. discreta to Anthostoma under the name A. discincolum (Schw.), but this could scarcely be considered congeneric with any of the species originally included in Anthostoma by its author. The perithecia in N. Bulliardi are in a single series and a similar epistromatic conidial layer precedes the formation of the entostromatic perithecia in both species. It therefore seems that a natural grouping of species would require