CLAVARIA, CLUB-TOP: A genus belonging to the cryptogamia class of plants, and of the order of fungi; the 58th in the natural method. The fungus is smooth and oblong. The hemotodes, or oak leather club-top, exactly resembles tanned leather, except that it is thinner and softer. It is of no determinate form. It grows in the clefts and hollows of old oaks, and sometimes on ash in Ireland and in some places of England, &c. In Ireland it is used to dress ulcers, and in Virginia to spread plasters upon, instead of leather. The militaris, and one or two other species, are remarkable for growing only on the head of a dead insect in the nymphal state.
A modern writer on natural history (Mr Miller), has asserted the whole genus of clavaria to belong to the tribe of zoophytes, that is, to the animal, and not to the vegetable kingdom. According to his method, he ranks them among the Vermes, under a subdivision which
which he terms Fungosa osculis atomiferis; thereby understanding them to be compound animals with many orifices on their surface, from which are protruded atoms or animalcules which have a visible spontaneous motion, something similar to what is now acknowledged to be a fact with regard to a numerous class of marine bodies termed corallines. This motion, however, has not been observed by other naturalists. Schæffer has figured the seeds of several clavariæ as they appeared to him through the microscope; and none of these fungi, when burnt, emit the strong disagreeable smell peculiar to animal substances.