COPRINUS LAGOPUS ON BEET SEEDS 77 



Experiment Station at Purdue University, Lafayette, U.S.A., 

 coming up on Sugar-beet seeds ; and each of these investigators 

 sent me a packet of his infected seeds with a request for an 

 identification of the fungus. 



New Coprinus fruit-bodies were obtained by the writer, working 

 in association with Miss Dorothy Newton, from (1) the Mangel 

 seeds and (2) the Sugar-beet seeds, by sowing the seeds on sheets 

 of wet filter-paper in a crystalHsing dish. Some of the seeds germi- 

 nated normally, whilst others did not germinate at all. On the 

 latter, in both cultures, after a lapse of about three weeks, several 

 Coprinus fruit-bodies appeared, and a photograph of one of the 

 cultures showing fruit-bodies and Sugar-beet seedlings is repro- 

 duced in Fig. 48. The Coprinus on the Mangel seeds was identical 

 in appearance with the Coprinus on the Sugar-beet seeds, and both 

 Coprini had all the morphological and growth characteristics of 

 Coprinus lagopus Fr., as described and illustrated in Volume III 

 of these Researches. 



Miss Nev.'ton and I procured spores from (1) the Coprinus on the 

 Mangel seeds, (2) the Coprinus on the Sugar-beet seeds, and 

 (3) Coprinus lagopus coming up spontaneously on horse-dung balls 

 at Winnipeg and, by a series of mating experiments which are fully 

 described in a specia.1 paper,i we convinced ourselves that the 

 three Coprini are identical. In another paper Hanna,^ on the basis 

 of mating experiments, has shown that the Coprinus lagopus of 

 Winnipeg, Canada, and the C. lagopus of Birmingham, England, 

 are identical. 



From the above discussion we are justified in concluding th.it, 

 as shown by comparative morphology and by mating experiments, 

 the Coprinus which comes up on germinating Mangel seeds in 

 England and on germinating Sugar-beet seeds in the United States 

 of America is identical with Coprinus lagopus Fr. as it occurs on 

 horse dung in England and Canada and as described and illustrated 

 by the writer in Vol. Ill of these Besearches. 



1 A. H. R. BuUer and Dorothy Newton, " The Mating Method of Identification 

 of a Coprinus growing on Germinating Seeds of Mangel and Sugar-beet," Annals of 

 Botany, vol. xli, 1927, pp. 663-670 and Plate XXVIII. 



2 W. F. Hanna, " The Problem of Sex in Coprinus lagopus," Annals of Botany, 

 vol. xxxix, 1925, pp. 431-457. 



