Lysurus Periphragmoides - Taxonomy and Naming

Taxonomy and Naming

The basionym for this species is Simblum periphragmoides, first described by German mycologist Johann Friedrich Klotzsch in 1831, based on specimens collected in Bois Chéry in Mauritius. Klotzsch designated it as the type species of Simblum, a genus differentiated from the similar genus Lysurus by having the fruit body ending in a spherical, chambered head, with gleba developing within the depressions of the chambers. Lysurus periphragmoides is a morphologically variable species; as a result, it has acquired an extensive number of synonyms, as various authors have decided that the different forms warranted being designated as new species. Donald Malcolm Dring's 1980 monograph on the Clathraceae (a family that has since been subsumed into the Phallaceae) transferred the taxon to Lysurus, explaining "a distinction between "Simblum" and Lysurus in the original restricted sense cannot be easily maintained because there are examples of intermediates states", and he lumped 18 synonyms under L. periphragmoides.

In one noted example of an author being too eager to assign a new name, in 1902 George Francis Atkinson described a specimen he found in Texas, otherwise similar to Simblum but with a loose net drooping from the head; he initiated the new genus Dictybole to include his "new" species D. texense. The species was, according to mycologist Curtis Gates Lloyd, merely a decomposing or insect-damaged specimen of L. periphragmoides that had been preserved in alcohol. Lloyd criticized Atkinson's poor judgment in his self-published journal Mycological Notes, and later, humiliated him under the pen name N.J. McGinty. William H. Long later (1907) transferred Atkinson's taxon to the genus Simblum, claiming that the yellow arms and longer spores were sufficiently distinct to consider it distinct from L. periphragmoides (then known as Simblum sphaerocephalum); however, according to Dring, D. texense should also be considered a synonym of L. periphragmoides. Despite Dring's renaming, and the subsequent acceptance of his subsuming of the genus Simblum into Lysurus, the species is still occasionally referred to Simblum sphaerocephalum.

The specific epithet periphragmoides means "fenced in all around", and refers to the latticed structure of the cap. The fungus is commonly known as the "stalked lattice stinkhorn" or "chambered stinkhorn".