Kelley 



18 — 



Mycotrophy 



Four orders of Hepatics are recognized, of which two, the Ric- 

 ciales and the Anthocerotales have received virtually no attention from 

 our workers. It is not likely that the Ricciales, which are mostly 

 aquatic, should have endophytes ; and there is but one report for these 

 two orders, made by an early worker named Milde in 1851. He found 

 what he termed "Kugeln" or little barrel-shaped spore-like bodies in 

 the thallus of Anthoceros, Riccia, and other frondose hepatics, and he 

 found that these "Kugeln" were made of little "cells" united in strings 

 and that they never left the thallus voluntarily: "neither am I able", 

 he said, "to make any observation as to their significance". 



Fig. 1. — Longitudinal section through mycothallus of PeIHa epiphylla. A 

 fungal hypha, having entered through a rhizoid, ramified through tissues of the 

 mycothallus and produced intracellular vesicles. (^Redrawn from Ridler, Ann. 

 Bot. 36:198, 1922). 



Most of the work on mycothalli has been done on the Marchanti- 

 aceae and Jungermanniaceae, the Favourite Four species for study 

 being Conocephalus (Fegatella) coniciis, Marchantia polymorpha, 

 Lunularia criiciata, and Pellia epiphylla. A greenhouse in Holland, a 

 mountain area in India, a region in South Africa, the botanical garden 

 of Java, and a few other spots all in Europe except one in Morocco — 

 and none at all in the Americas — give us the rest of our information 

 regarding the mycothalli of liverworts. Apart from the four species 

 mentioned, only 37 other species have been reported on for their myco- 

 thallism and some of these reports are from the vague early days 

 while others are mere casual mentions. 



As to the other Bryophytes, we know virtually nothing of their 

 possible mycothallism. The Sphagnums, being aquatic mosses for the 



