Lloyd Mycological Writings V4.pdf - MykoWeb

SPORES COLORED, TRUNCATE.
Fig. 702.
Polyporus colossus.
This is a large species of tropical America and Africa, but hardly
large enough to be called colossus. Compared to another that grows
in tropical America (Polyporus talpae) it is a pygmy. Fries named it
"colossus" from the West Indies, but did not give the size of his
specimen. The fragment that remains is only a few inches in diameter.
At Kew there is a record from Africa, where it has proved more common
than in the American tropics, size 9x 12x5 inches. The soft,
spongy flesh is characteristic, no other similar Ganodermus known.
Evidently it is a plant of rapid growth.
Patouillard first met a conidial form which had in the tissue large,
globose, rough, colored, conidial spores with scattered tubercles (see
Fig. 703). He called it Polyporus
Adansonii. Afterward when he
received the normal form with
normal spores (Fig. 704), he considered
it was the same plant, and
we think correctly, and called it
Polyporus obockensis. Of course,
he had no way of knowing anything
about Fries' plant in a jar at
Upsala. Massee also discovered it
was a new species and called it
Hollandii. We have al-
Polyporus
ready commented on Murrill's bull in discovering this was a "new
genus," with "globose, smooth, hyaline spores" (sic). Further remarks
under this head are not necessary. How it happened that this
fairly common species did not drift into Berkeley we do not know.
Polyporus colossus occurs in the American tropics, but is not common,
as we have only one collection from this region and there is but one at
New York. It is quite common in Africa, however, and we have a
collection from India.
SPECIMENS. Barbados, A. A. Evelyn; Africa, P. Hariot; India, J. H. Irani.
Compare Adansonii, Hollandii, obockensis.
, 369
.
Fig. 704.