undeveloped or younger, so that the surface of the under side is not
regular. The tubes are not so crowded as is usual in the _Fistulina
hepatica_. They are not decurrent, but end abruptly near the stem. The
=spores= are subglobose, 3 mu in diameter. The stem tapers downward, is
whitish below, and near the pileus the color changes rather abruptly to
the same tint as the pileus. The stem is sometimes branched, and two or
three caps present, or the caps themselves may be joined, as well as the
stems, so that occasionally very irregular forms are developed, but
there is always the peculiar character of the attachment of the stem to
the side of the cap.

Figure 180 is from plants (No 3676, C. U. herbarium) collected at
Blowing Rock, N. C., September, 1899. Figures on the colored plate
represent this plant.

=Polyporus frondosus= Fr. =Edible.=--This plant occurs in both Europe
and America, and while not very common seems to be widely distributed.
It grows about old stumps or dead trees, from roots, often arising from
the roots below the surface of the ground, and also is found on logs.
The plant represents a section of the genus _Polyporus_, in which the
body, both the stem and the cap, are very much branched. In this species
the stem is stout at the base, but it branches into numerous smaller
trunks, which continue to branch until finally the branches terminate in
the expanded and leaf-like caps as shown in Figs. 181--182. The plants
appear usually during late summer and in the autumn. The species is
often found about oak stumps. Some of the specimens are very large, and
weigh 10 to 20 pounds, and the mass is sometimes 30 to 60 cm. (1--2
feet) in diameter.

The plant, when young and growing, is quite soft and tender, though it
is quite firm. It never becomes very hard, as many of the other species
of this family. When mature, insects begin to attack it, and not being
tough it soon succumbs to the ravages of insects and decay, as do a
number of the softer species of the _Polyporaceae_. The caps are very
irregular in shape, curved, repand, radiately furrowed, sometimes zoned;
gray, or hair-brown in color, with a perceptibly hairy surface, the
hairs running in lines on the surface. Sometimes they are quite broad
and not so numerous as in Plate 67, and in other plants they are narrow
and more numerous, as in Plate 68. The tubes are more or less irregular,
whitish, with a yellowish tinge when old. From the under side of the c