Survey of Plant Kingdom 123 



primarily saprophytes on damp, decaying vegetable materials. They 

 resemble certain fungi in their methods of spore formation and resemble 

 certain lower animals because of their slimy, amoeba-like bodies, their 

 amoeboid methods of locomotion by the formation of pseudopodia, and 

 their ingestion of solid foods. The vegetative plant body is a thin mass 

 of naked, slimy protoplasm known as the Plasmodium (plaz -mo' di um) 

 (Gr. plasma, liquid; eidos, form) which contains numerous nuclei (multi- 

 nucleated) and creeps by a flowing of the protoplasm with the forma- 

 tion of pseudopodia (su do -po' di a) (Gr. pseudes, false; pous, foot) . It 

 ingests solid foods in ways which resemble those of certain lower animals. 



STEM0NITI5 



LYCOGALA 



Fig. 35. — Slime molds of the phylum Myxomycophyta. Stemonitis shows a 

 stalked sporangium (spore case) with its branched capillitium and spores. Ly co- 

 gala shows, A, fruiting bodies (sporangia) which produce spores internally; B, 

 germinating spore to form a mononucleated protoplast; C, a mononucleated, pear- 

 shaped swarm spore with a flagellum at the pointed end; some of the swarm 

 spores function as gametes to form a zygote which eventually grows to form a 

 multinucleated, amoeboid plasmodium; from the latter are produced the fruiting 

 bodies again. 



The Plasmodium produces a number of spore cases called sporangia 

 (spor -anj' i a) (Gr. sporos, spore or "seed"; anggeion, vessel) . The color 

 of the sporangium varies with the species (colorless, purple, orange, 

 brown, etc.). Numerous unicellular, nonmotile spores are formed in 

 each sporangium. Each germinating spore forms one to four swarm 



