club-root; a genus of the order of the fungi, belonging to the cryptogamia class of plants. There are 16 species, of which none are remarkable except the hemotades, or oak-leather club-root. This 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.

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 he terms Fungosa oculata atomifera; thereby understanding them to be compound animals with many orifices on their surface, from which are protruded atoms or animacules 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 coraline. This motion, however, has not been observed by other naturalists. Scheffer has figured the seeds of several clavaria as they appeared to him through the microscope; and none of these fungi when burnt, emit the strong disagreeable smell peculiar to animal substances.