Teacher's Leaflet. iiii 



(6). Have you ever seen toadstools that instead of having the leaf-Hke 

 gills, have a porous surface beneath the cap like a little honeycomb 

 or like the under side of the shelf fungi ? 



(7). How many kinds of shelf fungi can you find? Which of them 

 is on living trees and which on stumps or dead wood? 



(8). If the fungus is on a living tree, then the tree is ruined, for the 

 fungus threads have worked through it and weakened it so that it will 

 break easily and is of no use as lumber. There must have been an open 

 wound in the tree where the fungus entered. See whether you can 

 find this wound. There must also have been a wound where the shelf 

 grew out; see whether you can detect it. If the tree should heal all 

 its wounds after the fungus entered, what would become of the fungus? 



(9), What does the shelf fungus feed on? What part of it cor- 

 responds to the roots and leaves of other plants? What part may be 

 compared to the flowering and fruiting parts of plants? 



(10). What treatment must we give to trees to keep them free from 

 this enemy? 



Facts for Teachers. — There are many species of the bracket fungi but there 

 are three species best known to the woods lover. One of these Polyponts appla- 

 natiis, gray above and with creamy surface below, is a favorite with amatuer 

 etchers, who with a sharp point sketch on the naturally prepared surface. This 

 species often grows to great size and is frequently very old. Another species 

 is a beautiful mahogany red above, or in young specimens coral red, and has a 

 thick stem from which it depends; stem and upper surface are polished as if var- 

 nished; the lower surface is of a yellowish white color. This species is Poly poms 

 liiridus. Another spicies, Polyponts sulphiireits. is sulphur yellow above and below 

 and is characterized by many specimens being together with overlapping fan- 

 shaped caps. 



Many of the shelf fungi live only on dead wood, in which way they are a help in 

 reducing dead branches and stumps to soil but several of them attack living 

 trees and do great damage. These fungi can gain access to the living tree only 

 through injury to the protecting bark, caused perhaps by wind or by a bruise 

 from a falling tree, or more often from the hack of a careless axman ; or they may 

 gain entrance through an unhealed knot-hole. To one w-ho understands trees 

 and loves them it is almost pathetic to watch their patient striving to heal these 

 wounds inflicted by forces they cannot stay. 



When, before this healing is accomplished, the winds sift into the wound the 

 almost omnipresent spores of these fungi, the work of destruction begins. 

 From the spores grow the mycelium, the fungus threads. These threads push 

 themselves into the heart wood, getting nourishment from it as they go. We 

 look at wood thus diseased, and say it is rotting. But rotting means the yielding 

 up of the body substance of the tree to these voracious threads. They push 

 themselves in radially and then grow upward and downward, w^eakcning the 

 tree where it most needs strength to withstand the beatings of the wind. The 

 later ramihcations of the parasite may reach the cambium layer, the living ring 



