NOTES ON THE LOWER BASIDIOMYCETES OF NORTH 



CAROLINA * 



By W. C. Coker 



Plates 23 and 30-66 



With the exception of some minute forms parasitic on insects, etc., 

 the true fungi may be divided into three great classes, as follows : 



A. Phycomycetes. Simple plants of webby or moldy growth, not 



forming large or complicated fruit bodies. In their reproduction 

 they are distinguished by the presence, in most cases, of true 

 eggs or gametes in addition to asexual spores. They include, 

 among other forms, some of the molds, such as the black mold on 

 bread, the downy mildews, which are destructive parasites on 

 higher plants, as grapes, potatoes, etc., and the water molds, one 

 of which causes a disease of fish. None of this group will be 

 treated in this work. A separate book on the water molds of the 

 United States will be published soon. 



B. Basidiomycetes. To this group belong the vast majority of mush- 



rooms and toadstools. With the exception of some of the lower 

 groups, such as the rusts and smuts, which are diseases of higher 

 plants and are not treated in this book, they form in nearly all 

 cases a complicated fruit body that we usually speak of as the 

 plant, but this body is the product of an extensive vegetative sj'S- 

 tem of a webby or cottony character which ramifies through the 

 earth or wood from which the mushroom arises. The most dis- 

 tinctive character is the production of the spores on the ends of 

 club-shaped or pear-shaped microscopic branches or basidia which 

 are formed on certain parts of the fruit body, and help to make 

 up a distinct spore-producing surface or layer called the hymen- 

 ium. In most species each basidium produces four spores on its 

 end, each supported on a slender stalk. 



C. AscoMYCETES. A Very extensive group of fungi of great economic 



importance because of the large number of destructive parasites 

 it contains. They are quite varied in form and size, ranging 

 from minute (as in man}' parasites, in 3'east, etc.) to moderately 

 large (as in the Morels). The spores are contained in saes which 



* Many of the drawings in this cliapter were made by Miss Alma Holland, Assistant in 

 Botany. Mr. J. N. Coucli, Assistant in Botany, drew most of the figures of Gymnosporan- 

 gium, SejJtobasidium and Sel)acina. A good many figures were drawn by tlie author and inked 

 in by Miss Holland. The colored i)late was painted in p:irt by MissM. E. Eaton, of New 

 York, and in p;.rt by Miss Cornelia S. Love, of Chapel Hill. 



