Moulds, Mildews, and Mushrooms
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MARINE BIOLOGICAL -13 CD Os I i I m o *Jrl MOULDS MILDEWS AND MUSHROOMS A GUIDE TO THE SYSTEMATIC STUDY OF THE FUNGI AND MYCETOZOA AND THEIR LITERATURE BY LUCIEN MARCUS UNDERWOOD Professor of Botany, Cohimbia University NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1899 Copyright, 1899, BY LUCIEN MARCUS UNDERWOOD THE NEW EKA PRINTING COMPANY LANCASTER, PA. PREFACE The increasing interest that has been developed in fungi dur- ing the past few years, together with the fact that there is no guide written in the English language to the modern classification of the group and its extensive but scattered literature, has led the writer to prepare this introduction for the use of those who wish to know something of this interesting series of plants. With nearly a thousand genera of fungi represented in our country alone, it was manifestly impossible to include them all in a pocket guide. A line must be drawn somewhere, and it was decided to include : (i) Conspicuous fleshy and woody fungi, (2) The cup-fungi, since so little literature treating of American forms was available, and (3) Genera containing parasitic species. Most of the genera of the so-called Pyrenomycetes and many of the saprophytic/wz7 iniperfecti are therefore omitted from special consideration. It is hoped that for the groups treated, the synopses will be suf- ficiently simple to enable the average student to distinguish gen- erically the ordinary fungi that he is likely to find. In every order, references to the leading systematic literature have been freely given, in the hope that some will be encouraged to take up the systematic study of some group and pursue it as exhaustively as possible. With all the diversity of interesting lines of research that are constantly opening before the student of botany of to-day, there is none more inviting to a student, or better adapted to bring into activity all the resources of his judgment, than the sys- tematic study of the species of some limited group, provided this is properly combined with a study of the morphology, develop- ment, and ecologic relations of such a related series. With very few exceptions, there is no group of fungi that is not in crying need of thorough and original systematic study. iii iv PREFACE The attempt has also been made in the following pages to meet the popular interest in fungi as an article of food, by treating the fleshy forms with a greater degree of fulness than others, and one should be able from this treatment to discriminate the ordinary edible, suspicious, and poisonous species, and recognize with suf- ficient certainty what forms are safe to test for food. Those whose interest centers in edible species alone, will find the groups that interest them on pages 63-66, 97-129, and 136-145. It is sug- gested that, in the field of exploration for edible species, it is safest to make haste slowly, and the novice is hereby warned of the danger of eating any species which is not thoroughly known. In the general arrangement of the system the writer has largely followed the treatment in Die natiirlichen Pflanzenfainilien, tho deviations from the sequence of groups there adopted will fre- quently appear, and group names orders and families are made rigidly to conform to the system proposed at Berlin, but indiffer- ently followed in their recent publications. The writer is deeply indebted to his friend and former col- league, Professor F. S. Earle, for his kindness in reading those parts of the proof relating especially to parasitic species, and for valuable and to his Dr. making many suggestions ; assistant, Marshall A. Howe, for much kindly assistance and many useful suggestions. The colored plate which introduces the book was painted from nature by a former student, Miss Julia E. Clearwaters, and has been faithfully reproduced in six colors by the Heliotype Printing Company of Boston. The nine plates which conclude the work were drawn under the writer's direction Miss M. E. Baker by ; these are from various sources which are duly credited in the ex- of a few were drawn direct from nature. planations figures ; COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, 20 July, 1899. CONTENTS MORCHELLA ESCULENTA-FRONTISPIECE Chapter I. Introductory, .... i Chapter II. The Relations of Fungi to other Plants, Chapter III. Reproduction, Constituents, and Habits, 13 Chapter IV. Class I. PHYCOMYCETES, . .22 Chapter V. Class II. ASCOMYCETES 34 Chapter VI. The Fungi Imperfecti, . 68 Chapter VII. The lower BASIDIOMYCETES, . .80 Chapter VIII. The higher BASIDIOMYCETES, . 94 Chapter IX. Fungus Allies the MYXOMYCETES, . .146 Chapter X. The Study of Mycology in general and its Study in America in particular, . 155 Chapter XI. The Geographic Distribution of American Fungi, . 165 Chapter XII. Methods of Collection and Preservation of Fungi Hints for further Study, . .201 INDEXES I. Index to Latin Names, ..... 209 II. Index to Host Plants, 216 III. Index of Authors and Collectors, . 218 IV. General Index and Explanation of Terms, . 221 PLATES 1-9 WITH EXPLANATIONS, ..... 228 MOULDS, MILDEWS AND MUSHROOMS CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY The world is full of surprises on every hand. To one whose of familiarity with plants is limited to the trees and shrubs parks and groves, or the herbaceous plants of indoor cultivation, or the grasses of limited plots and lawns, or even to one whose walks more happily include the fields and woodlands, it may seem per- plexing, perhaps, to be told that the green slimes with which Nature paints the shaded walls and tree-trunks, or that float as a green scum on the surface of pools, or that cover the pots and benches in green-houses, are likewise plants, each in its simpler, less assuming manner carrying on the same functions as the more conspicuous trees and shrubs. The surprise may be still greater when he learns that the gray-green lichens on fences and rocks, the toadstools springing from the ground or old tree-trunks, the puff-balls clustered on old logs or the larger ones growing singly in pastures are also plants. After this he will be more able to believe that the moulds that grow on cheese or preserves, the mildews and blights that spread over cultivated plants to their injury, the smut of corn and oats, the rust of wheat and other cereals, are all likewise plants, each with its own peculiar life his- tory, each with its peculiar method of reproduction, each occupy- ing its definite place in the economy of Nature. And probably the surprise will be greatest of all to those fortunate persons who have not learned to depend on the baker alone for their supply of the staff of life and to whom the process of bread-making is not an obsolete feature of household work, to be gravely informed that the very yeast by which their flour and water is made to rise into the porous spongy dough is just as truly a plant as is the geranium i 2 INTRODUCTORY growing at the kitchen window or the maple that shades the kitchen porch, and that the entire process of bread-raising is due to the growth, development and rapid reproduction of a plant quickened into activity by the presence of moisture and a suitable degree of warmth. Surprise may thence degenerate into a shock when persons, even those of the most refined habits, come to learn that in. their own persons they support varied and interesting colo- nies of extremely minute plants which find perhaps the most suit- able conditions for their development and multiplication among the papillae of the tongue and about the crowns of the teeth. Somehow many people associate life with locomotion and while they think of animals as alive, they look upon plants as dead, and upon botany as the study of the dead rather than of the living. There can be no greater mistake, for plants equally with animals are not only thoroughly alive, but from the greater simplicity of their structure offer even better facilities for the working out of problems connected with general biology, the science not of ani- mals alone, but of all living things. When a compound microscope becomes as much of a house- hold as. a clock or a when children are necessity piano ; early taught the nature study of every-day life, and become familiar with the common things in nature around them, these ideas as to what the term plant life includes will not only cease to strike us as mysterious, but our range of available information will be in- finitely extended. There is no reason whatever why a compound microscope of low magnifying power should not be just as much a common appurtenance of a well-regulated household as a piano or a music-box. Not as an instrument to be kept under a glass case to show to strangers, not as an elaborate piece of mechanism liable to become disarranged by use, but a simple apparatus suita- ble to be used by intelligent children and an every day source of instruction and enjoyment. In our early childhood many of us acquire certain bits of in- formation, too often as the direct result of teaching, that in after life we find ourselves forced to unlearn. Some of these are princi- ples that the books conspired to impress upon us. The dogma that the interior of the earth is molten and that the exterior crust is thinner proportionately than an egg-shell was stated to us in the geographies with all the gravity of established truth, and yet it is INTR OD UCTOR Y 3 supported by the most flimsy evidence and no one at present thinks of it seriously as a possible theory even.