The Ascomycetes of Ohio Author:Bruce Fink Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE ASCOMYCETES OF OHIO.—II THE COLLEMACEAE BRUCE FINK AND C. AUDREY RICHARDS General Considerations Hitherto comparatively few descriptions of lichens... more » as fungi have been undertaken. In many short diagnoses of lichens, mention of the algal hosts has been omitted, and many lichens have been treated thus inadvertently as fungi. But in more lengthy diagnoses or descriptions, the common practice has been to consider the algal host as part of the lichen. In order to dispose of typical lichens as fungi, no greater departure from the ordinary methods is required than to omit from the descriptions all reference to the algal host, the thing which is now often done through inadvertency. However, in order to apply to a few families of lichens the methods commonly employed in the taxonomic disposition of fungi, a method must be followed which diverges considerably from that which has been employed by lichenists. If it should be found impracticable to treat any group of ascomy- cetous lichens as fungi, the whole plan of treatment of ascomycetes proposed in the first paper of this series would be impossible of execution. Consequently, we have considered, in this second contribution toward a knowledge of the ascomycetes of Ohio, a family of lichens, the treatment of which as fungi probably involves as wide a departure from the method commonly employed by students of lichens as any group that could be chosen. In order to demonstrate as early as possible in this series of papers how slight are the changes required in order to treat the large majority of lichens as fungi, the Lecideaceae, another family of lichens, will receive consideration in the next paper of this series. The study of the Collcmaceae has been made classic through the contributions of several botanists. De Bary st...« less