The plasmodium is white, noted Bulliard. Fries cites with approval the words of Schweinitz,--"color corticis ab initio argenteus sericeo nitore insignis; sed deinde sordescit e griseo in subfuscum vergens." Sometimes the surface does indeed shine as silver!
The fructification appears to be isolated in each case; the entire plasmodium consumed in a single plasmodiocarp.
Widely distributed. Maine to California, and south.
1818. _Enteridium_ Ehrenberg, Link and Spreng., _Jahrb., Bd._ II., p. 55.
Fructification æthalioid; the confluent sporangia inextricably interwoven, the walls perforate by large openings, the resultant network of broad plates and bands widening at the points of intersection.
The genus _Enteridium_ is distinguished from _Reticularia_ chiefly by the more perfectly developed sporangial walls. These are everywhere membranous and do not show the abundant filiform dissipation so characteristic of _Reticularia_. The resultant structure in _Reticularia_ is a mass of more or less lengthened and anastomosing threads; in _Enteridium_, an exceedingly delicate but sufficiently persistent sponge. The "net-like, three-winged skeleton" referred to by Rostafinski results from the union at one point of three adjoining sporangia. Compare the section of the adjoining cells of a honeycomb.
Of this genus there are but two or three species, all so far occurring in our territory.
_A._ Fructification umber brown 1. _E. splendens_
_B._ Fructification olivaceous 2. _E. olivaceum_
_C._ Fructification minute, 1-2 mm. 3. _E. minutum_
PLATE I., Figs. 1, 1 _a_, 1 _b_; PLATE XII., Figs. 4, 5.
1876. _Reticularia_ (?) _rozeanum_ Rost., _Mon. App._, p. 33. 1889. _Enteridium rozeanum_ (Rost.) Wing., _Proc. Phil. Acad._, p. 156. 1892. _Enteridium rozeanum_ Wingate, Macbr., _Bull. Lab. Nat. Hist. Iowa_, II., p. 117. 1893. _Reticularia splendens_ Morg., _Jour. Cin. Soc._, p. 11. 1899. _Enteridium splendens_ Morg., Morg. _in litt._
Æthalium pulvinate, even, or somewhat irregular, unevenly swollen or inflated, lobate or compound, covered by an exceedingly thin, generally smooth, shining, but never white, pellicle or cortex, brown, from 1-6 cm. in diameter; hypothallus white, often wide extending; capillitium none; the sporangial walls thin and brown forming a network as above described; spore-mass umber, spores by transmitted light pale, about two-thirds of the surface reticulate, the rest nearly smooth, 7-9 µ.