196 THE HIGHER FUNGI : CARPOMYCETEAE 



chyma. Except for the septa separating the cells in the same hypha the 

 cell walls are double, i.e., walls of separate cells pressed together and 

 usually adhering, but not the result of division of one preexisting cell. 

 The interior cells of a sclerotium are filled with stored food and the outer 

 cells are thick-walled, almost sclerenchymatous, and usually dark in 

 color. Pseudoparenchyma may be found also in the fruiting bodies of 

 some of the Higher Fungi, such as the perithecia and apothecia of some 

 of the Ascomyceteae. True parenchyma is apparently present in some 

 fungi of this group. The body of the spore fruit is more often built up of 

 elongated, more or less interwoven hyphae of elongated cells. This is 

 often, though erroneously, as Starback (1895) points out, called prosen- 

 chyma. In parasitic species the mycelium often sends haustoria of various 

 shapes into the host cells. 



Fruiting Structures 



Unlike the Lower Fungi whose fruiting structures are microscopic or 

 at most only a few millimeters or centimeters in length (some Mucorales) , 

 the fruiting bodies of the Higher Fungi often attain considerable size. 

 Thus Calvatia gigantea (Batsch ex Pers.) Lloyd, the giant puffball, was 

 recorded by C. E. Bessey (1884) as producing a spore fruit 1.6 meters 

 long, 1.35 meters wide, and about 24 cm. high. That of Fomes officinalis 

 (Vill.) Fr. sometimes (rarely it is true) reaches the height of 60 cm. and 

 a diameter of 15 to 20 cm. Clements (1910) reported that Polyporus 

 squamosus (Huds.) Fr. is "said to attain a width of 7 feet and a weight of 

 40 pounds." Roger Heim (1936) has described three species of Boletaceae 

 from South Africa and Madagascar 40 to 60 cm. in pileus diameter. 

 Ljungh (1804) described a species of cup-fungus from Java, Peziza cacabus 

 (now called Geopyxis cacabus (Fr.) Sacc), with a spore fruit 3 ft. tall, 

 the cup being 20 in. tall and 25 in. broad, and the hollow stipe 16 in. tall 

 and 3 in. thick. Specimens of a form of Agaricus arvensis Fr. collected 

 by the author had a pileus diameter of 30 cm. Such enormous spore fruits 

 produce almost incredible numbers of spores. Thus Buller (1909) esti- 

 mated that a puffball 40 X 28 X 20 cm. would produce about 7 trillion 

 (7,000,000,000,000) spores. At the same rate the enormous puffball men- 

 tioned above would produce about 160 trillion (160,000,000,000,000) 

 spores. A specimen of Agaricus campestris Fr. only 8 cm. in diameter 

 produced over 1,800,000,000 spores at the rate of about 40,000,000 spores 

 per hour. At this rate the Agaricus arvensis found by the author would 

 have produced about 27,000,000,000 spores. A spore fruit of Ganoderma 

 applanatum (Pers. ex Fr.) Pat. with an area of one square foot lower surface 

 produced, according to White (1920), 30,000,000,000 spores a day for 

 about six months, or a total of over 5,000,000,000,000 spores. On the 

 other hand many of the Higher Fungi have microscopic spore fruits. 



