Resupinate Pore Fungi in Oregon

Abstract

The genus Poria was first used, in the sense now current, by Persoon, in jiis Disposino methodica fungorum of 1794. Later he treated it as a subgenus, in the Synopsis (41) under Boletus, and in the Mycologia europaea (42) under Polyporus. It was first validly published by S. F. Gray (22) in 1821, shortly after Fries (21) had commenced the publication of his classic Systerna mycologicum. Gray used the name for seven species of light-colored resupinate polypores. Fries had used the generic name Polyporus for all fungi now included in Polyporus, Pomes, and Poria; he never had a group of generic rank for resupinate species of polypores. In 1886 M. C. Cooke (18) published his emended form of the genus Poria. Karsten had previously used the name for a group of light-colored resupinate polypores, following the Gray interpretation. Whereas Karsten's treatment of the genus excluded species which changed color when bruised or when dry, as well as those with dark context, Cooke included in it all resupinate pore-bearing fungi. It is in the sense of Cooke that the genus is commonly used today. Since Poria was first validly used by Gray, however, it must be attributed to him. As M. C. Cooke emended Poria, the genus includes all pore fungi with a resupinate habit of growth. This, to the writer, is still a much too inclusive group to retain in one genus. As Donk (20) has pointed out, Poria as at present used is a form genus. When a species can be proven to have at times a reflexed pileus, that species may more naturally be transferred to the genus in which that type of pileus, with its accompanying hymenophore, belongs. Bourdot and Galzin (11), followed by Donk (20), have divided the genus into a number of subgenera in which the morphology is sometimes recognized in the subgeneric name. Poria, in the sense in which the genus is used today by Baxter (2-10), Overholts (35-39), Lloyd (26), in part by Murrill (28-34), by the present writer, and by other American writers, as well as by many, if not most, European writers, is an artificial genus, polyphyletic in nature, which must sooner or later be arranged in a more natural system. However, this new arrangement cannot be made in a satisfactory way until the different units in related and similarly polyphyletic genera such as Corticium, Polyporus, Pomes, and others are better understood.