2652
T H E L O T R EMA Hutchinsiæ.
Miss Hutchins’s Thelotrema.
CRYPTOGAMIA Lichenes.
Gen. Char. Verruca; formed from the thallus, simple,
with an irregular orifice. Nucleus solid, fleshy ;
at length exposed and dilated into a disk, usually
surrounded by a thin margin* detached from the
exterior substance of the verruca.
Spec. Char. Crust very white. Verrucas crowded,
obsolete, of irregular figure; at length expanding:
with a broken flocculose inflexed orifice, the
nucleus forming a dark grey pruinose concave
disk, with a white lacerated margin.
O n e of the many interesting discoveries which rewarded
the unwearied botanical zeal of the late amiable and accomplished
Miss Hutchins. It was found near Bantry, and
communicated to Mr. Dawson Turner, who proposed to
name it after its discoverer, and with whose concurrence it
is referred to the genus Thelotrema. It may be regarded
however as of disputable genus. In habit it is more similar
to some of the Variolarice than to the other Thelotremata ;
and it still more nearly resembles that variety, as it probably
ought still to be accounted, of the Acharian Urceolaria
scruposa (Lichen scruposus of Engl, Bot. t. 266.), which in
the Synopsis Lichenum is called Gyalecta bryophila. Yet
in the structure of the fructification it appears to agree
essentially with the type of the genus Thelotrema, T. lepa-
dinum of Acharius (Lichen inclusus, Engl. Bot. t. 678.), particularly
in the presence, in an advanced stage, of a thin
* Formed, according to Acharius, by the rupture of a membranous peri-
thecium, which originally invests the whole nucleus.