I. 7. THE RED CEDAR. 107 



however, found to have quite a different origin. They make 

 their appearance, according to Schweinitz, from whom this ac- 

 count is obtained, on the most delicate branches of the cedar, 

 of the size of the head of a pin, and gradually increase to the 

 diameter of one or two inches, still traversed by the unaltered 

 branch. Whilst fresh and young, their substance is like that of 

 an unripe apple, and of a whitish green color within. This 

 green tint soon changes to a tawny orange, and a few whitish 

 fibres are observed radiating and branching from the base. They 

 are covered with a bark of a brown purplish lilac color, which is 

 juiceless, like the peel of an apple. The whole surface is dotted 

 with small polygonal, usually pentagonal, depressions, which 

 are at first plane, afterwards slightly projecting in the centre. 

 These projecting centres at last burst, and there issue forth 

 from each, in moist weather, slender, gelatinous, strap-like 

 " sporidochia, about an inch in length, of the most beautiful 

 orange color, adorning, in the course of a single spring night, 

 the whole tree, as it were, with the richest crop of ripe oranges. 

 If wet weather continues for many days, it remains in this state 

 till the ligules melt away. Under the influence of the sun, 

 however, they soon dry up, and never revive." This gelati- 

 nous substance is composed of the lengthened sporidia, spore- 

 vessels, or seed-vessels, of a minute fungus, called by Schweinitz 

 Podisbma macropus. Dr. J. Wyman has discovered one of these 

 fungi so constantly near the lengthened acerose leaves, men- 

 tioned above, that he conceives there must be some connexion 

 between them, and that the fungus is, perhaps, the cause of the 

 peculiarity in the length and shape of the leaf. I believe, how- 

 ever, that acerose leaves occur on perfectly healthy branches. 

 The cedar apples continue to increase until the sporidochia 

 burst forth ; but after this evolution has taken place, they cease 

 to grow, and begin to become hard and dry. They last a year. 

 When dry and old, they are of a spongy, fibrous texture, finally 

 almost woody, as if formed of fibres radiating from the base.* 

 On each of the junipers of Britain a similar fungus is found. 



* See a communication from Dr. J. Wyman, in the forty -second number of the 

 London Journal of Botany, with additional remarks by the Rev. M. J. Berkeley. 



