Minnesota Plant Life. 



75 



of the best known is the morel. This superficially resembles, 

 to some degree, the stinkhorn. It grows upon the ground 

 and the fruit-body consists of a hollow, cylindrical stem, some- 

 times three or four inches in 

 heio-ht and an inch in diameter. 

 The texture, however, is much 

 firmer than that of the stink- 

 horn stem and the cap upon 

 the end, though wrinkled like 

 the stinkhorn cap, is continu- 

 ous with the stem and not 

 slimy nor vile-smelling. Mo- 

 rels are edible and are said to 

 be especially prized in Bohe- 

 mia. They are often found 

 growing in Minnesota woods 

 and upon Minnesota hillsides, 

 where their fruit-bodies, unlike 

 those of the stinkhorn, ripen in 

 the spring. If one should ex- 

 amine under a microscope a 

 thin section cut through the 

 wrinkled surface of the cap, it 

 would be perceived that it con- 

 sists almost entirely of sacs, in 

 each of which eight oval spores 

 are produced in a row. Each 

 sac is cylindrical in form and 

 not much larger in diameter 

 than the spores which fill it. 

 When ripe the ends of the sacs 

 break or dissolve and the 

 spores pour out one after an- 

 other, but they are not, as was 

 the case in the stinkhorn, uni- 

 versally carried away by insects, for they depend rather upon the 

 wind and the rains for their distribution. 



A number of plants closely related to the morel may be dis- 

 tinguished by the dififerent shapes of their caps. In one the cap 



Fig. 26. A morel fniit-body. 

 After Ivloyd. 



