[Proc. Eot. Soc. Victoria, 24 (N.S.), Pt. I., 1911.] 



Art IV. — Fviiiting of '' Blaclx fellow s Bread" {Polyporus 

 Mylittae, Cooke). 



By ALFRED J. EWART, D.Sc, Ph.D., F.L.S. 



(Government Botanist of Victoria and Professor of Botany and 

 Plant Physiology in the Melbourne University). 



[Eead 20th April, 1911]. 



x\s is now well known, " Blackfellow's Bread " is the subter- 

 ranean sclerotiuni of a Polyporus, whose mycelium grows, pos- 

 sibly partly saprophytically and partly parasitically, on the 

 roots of forest trees. The sclerotia, which often attain a con- 

 siderable size, and may weigh 10 to 20 lbs., simply represent 

 a large store, chiefly of carbo-hydrate material, mainly in the 

 form of fungal cellulose stored up for the nourishment of the 

 large Polyporus-like sporophores which are formed under special 

 conditions. 



The sporophore, or fruiting body, appears to have been first 

 observed by Mr. Tisdall,! but its importance in determining the 

 classification of the fungus was not determined until a specimen 

 reached the mycologist Cooke, who, in a paper issued in the 

 Gardeners Chronicle for 1892, under the title, '' A Mystery 

 Solved,"' placed it under the genus Polyj^orus. Fruiting speci- 

 mens were subsequently described in detail by Mr. R. T. Baker,2 

 and by Mr, D, McAlpine.^ Tlie last-named gentleman gives 

 photographs of the fruit and also of the spores. 



For some time I have attempted to obtain fruits of the fungus 

 by keeping the sclerotes buried in moist soil in a greenhouse 

 for long periods of time, but without success. The cause of the 

 non-formation of the fruiting bodies could not be determined 

 until it was found that, as in the case of certain other Polypori, 

 the formative stimulus of lig'ht is necessary to induce the for- 

 mation of sporophores. For instance, a large specimen weigh- 

 ing, originally, over 12 lbs., was kept buried in soil in a pot 

 for '2\ 3'ears. At the end of that time, although somewhat 

 shrivelled and slightly rotted in parts, it was otherwise unal- 

 tered. On exposing it to light in the saine greenhouse in which 



1 Victorian Naturalist. 188.') and 1886, p. 19. 



2 Proc. Linn. Soc. New Soxith A\ales, 1902. 



3 Journal of Agriculture of Victoria, 1903, vol. ii., p. 1017 



