The Homes and Habits of Fungi 



decaying ring of fungi temporarily stimulates the grass around it, 

 so that its rich colour stands out in circles or arcs of circles against 

 the less highly nourished grass. Such rings are conspicuous on 

 the lawns of the White House at Washington, and are often to 

 be seen well defined on distant hillsides. 



Brackets and mushrooms and puffballs grow in warm, moist 

 places where they find decaying wood and leaves to feed upon. 

 Old tree trunks and fallen logs, rich leaf mould, and cattle pastures 

 are their favourite haunts. 



The reason for their choice of place is invariably connected 

 with the question of food, for fungi can thrive only where they 

 can obtain organic matter, as they have lost the power which all 

 green plants have of feeding on inorganic or mineral matter. All 

 plants must have food with which to form plant flesh. Green 

 plants by means of their leaf green — the only agent in the world 

 which has the power to turn lifeless mineral matter into living 

 matter — take the element carbon from the air, and hydrogen gas 

 and oxygen gas from water, and with their green granules, by some 

 mysterious process, make of the elements hydrogen, oxygen, and 

 carbon, compounds of wood and starch and sugar. Fungus plants 

 have none of this leaf green and must therefore feed on material 

 which has been manufactured by green plants. 



To define fungi simply, so as to include all the varieties, would 



be a difficult task ; but in general it may be said that they are 



plants which have no leaf green and which do not grow from true 



seeds, but from dustlike bodies resembling in appearance the yel- 



^•.^. low pollen of roses or lilies. 



.■^:-\". The fungi have no flowers and produce no 



seeds. They produce spores instead, fine dust-like 

 particles, which are borne in special places on the 

 mature plant, whether a mould or mildew, a toad- 

 stool, puffball, or bracket. The cap of a mush- 

 room placed right side up on a piece of paper under 

 an inverted glass will print with its spores a pic- 

 ,, „, ,, ture of the radiating leaves or gills beneath. A 



runball <^ ° 



slight blow on a puffball in the pasture will cause 

 a puff of smoke-like dust to rise from it — really millions of spores 

 that have ripened inside the puffball and are now ready to grow 

 into new puffball plants when they fall on favourable soil. 



