PUFFING IN THE DISCOMYCETES 239 



self saw fruit-bodies puff on several occasions when he was picking 

 them from the ground. We thus have good evidence that the fungus 

 may puff under field conditions.^ 



The Perennial Pseudorhiza. — Investigations made in the bush 

 convinced me that every fruit-body of Sarcoscypha protracta is 

 epixylous. The mycehum grows in the wood of roots which are 

 about 0' 3-1 • 5 cm. thick and buried in the leaf-mould to a depth of 

 1-10 cm. The roots presumably are those of Poplar. When the my- 

 cehum in a root has progressed sufficiently, it usually gives rise to a 

 single sohtary fruit-body which grows upwards through the leaf-mould 

 as a slender rod or stipe terminated by a rudimentary apothecium. 

 Tho growth in length of the stipe is intercalary and takes place just 

 below the cup. In this way the cup is pushed up through the leaf- 

 mould and raised somewhat above its surface. After being brought 

 by the intercalary growth of the stipe to the surface of the ground, 

 the apothecium expands and thus the mature fruit-body comes to 

 resemble the one shown in Fig. 116 or the one shown on the extreme 

 left in Fig. 115. The stipe may be considered as having two parts : 

 (1) a subterranean part which is blackened by the soil, slender, 

 easily broken, which corresponds exactly to the " rooting base " 

 of such Hymenomycetes as Collybia radicata and C. fusipes, and 

 which is best called a pseudorhiza, and (2) an aerial part, whitish 

 and highly tomentose, which may be referred to as the aerial stipe. 



At the end of the first spring, the soHtary fruit-bod}^ just des- 

 cribed does not entirely disappear. While its apothecium and its 

 aerial stipe die and rot away, the lower part of the pseudorhiza 

 persists in the living condition until the second spring. Then it 

 proliferates at its upper end and gives rise not to one but to several 

 new fruit-bodies, each of which has a pseudorhiza and aerial stipe 

 of its own. Thus in the second year there is developed a cluster of 

 fruit-bodies varying in number up to eleven. Three such clustered 

 fruit-bodies are shown on the right side of Fig. 115. 



At the end of the second spring, the cluster may die away com- 

 pletely, but investigation shows that sometimes at least, while the 



^ An account of the investigations recorded in this Chapter was given at the 

 International Botanical Congress, held at Ithaca, U.S.A., in August 1926. Vide the 

 Proceedings of the Congress, Vol. II, 1929, pp. 1627-1628. 



