Plants small, often csespitose, subglobose or obovate, umbonate, superficial, attached by a central basal rhizomorph, becoming tardily expanded when to 2 cm. across. -Exoperidium saccate, split to about the middle into 5-7 broad, bluntly pointed expanded rays; fleshy layer flesh coloured, drying bay brown, continuous, adnate; exterior free from debris, brown, strigose-tomentose; base convex, with a prominent umbilical scar. Endoperidium sessile, 5 mm. diameter, subglobose, pallid tan, finely iomentose or glabrous, lower third enclosed by the saccate base of the exoperidium; peristome conical, silky, fibrillose, concolorous or darker, frequently seated on a depressed zone. Gleba umber; pseudo-columella inevident. Spores globose, 3.5-4um diameter, epispore fuscous, 0.5um thick, finely and moderately verruculose. I have not seen Australian specimens, the description being drawn from North American material kindly forwarded by Dr. W. C. Coker. He examined the type of Geaster lignicola at Kew and found it to be the same as G.mirabile. The species is separated from G.velutinum—which it resembles in the tomentose exterior of the exoperidium—by the small size, usually cespitose habit and slightly smaller, more finely verruculose spores. Fructifications often grow in clusters upon the surface of a subiculum covering decaying vegetable debris on the ground.

DISTRIBUTION : North and South America; West Indies; Africa; Ceylon; Japan; Australia. Queensland: Rockingham Bay, Thozet, type of "Geaster lignicola," in herb. Kew.

TYPE LOCALITY: Guiana.