112 SAPROPHYTES IN THE HUMUS OF WOODS, MEADOWS, AND MOORS. 
The sight of the pale-coloured plants lifting their heads, at flowering time, from 
the tumid carpet of moss has all the stranger effect because, as a rule, no other 
flowering plants are visible in any direction. The flowers are suspended by delicate 
drooping pedicels, and owing to their peculiar colour, fleshy consistence, and form 
—the erect concave petal like a Phrygian cap or helmet, and the others stretched 
out like prehensile limbs—remind one of the opalescent medus® which float on 
the blue sea waves. The propriety of the analogy is enhanced by the fact 
that the form and colour of other saprophytes produced near Epipogium in 
woods have a striking resemblance to the animals and wracks which inhabit the 
sea-bottom. The fungi, known by the name of club-tops, much-branched, flesh- - 
coloured, yellow or white Clavarie, which often adorn whole tracts of ground in a 
wood, imitate the structure of corals; Hydnew are like sea-urchins, and Geaster 
like a star-fish, whilst the various species of Tremella, Exidia, and Guepinia, which 
are flesh-pink, orange, or brownish in colour, and the white translucent 7’remellodon 
gelatinosum, resemble gelatinous sponges. The small stiff toad-stools (Marasmius), 
which raise their slender stalks on fallen pine-needles, remind one of the rigid 
Acetabularie. Other toad-stools, with flat or convex caps exhibiting concentric 
bands and stripes, such as the different species of Craterellus, have an appearance 
similar to the salt-water alga known by the name of Padina. Dark species of 
Geoglossum imitate the brown Fucoidew; and one may fancy the red warts of 
Lycogala Epidendron, a plasmoid fungus inhabiting the rotten wood of dead 
weather-beaten trees, to be red sea-anemones with their tentacles drawn in, 
clinging to gray rocks. However far-fetched this comparison between the two 
localities may seem at first sight, everyone who has had an opportunity of 
thoroughly observing the characteristic forms of vegetable and animal life in 
woods, and at the bottom of the sea, will inevitably be convinced of its accuracy. 
Meadow-land, rich in humus, is much more sparsely occupied by saprophytes 
than the soil of woods. There is no lack of the strange forms of toad-stools and 
puff-balls, whose fructifications often spring up in thousands, especially in the 
autumn, in company with the meadow-saffron; but in numbers they are not to be 
compared with those which occur in the mould of woods. Amongst ferns and 
phanerogams, the following species are dependent upon the organic compounds 
arising from the decomposition of the humus: Moonwort (Botrychium Lunaria), 
numerous orchids, blue and violet-flowered gentians, the famous Arnica, Poly- 
galaceze, and more especially several grasses, chiefly the Matweed (Nardus stricta) 
which, when once it has struck root in the humus, extends in dense masses over 
large areas. Several plants, too, adorning alpine pastures, and belonging for the 
most part to the same families as the species mentioned above, are to be regarded 
as humus-plants. Such are the Alpine Club-moss (Lycopodium alpinum), the 
dark-flowered Nigritella nigra, and several other sub-alpine orchids; a number of 
small, sometimes tiny, gentians (Gentiana nivalis, G. prostrata, G. glacialis, 
G. nana, Lomatogonium Carinthiacum), Valeriana celtica, the Scottish asphodel 
(Tofieldia borealis) of the north, a few grasses, sedges, and rushes (e.g. Agrostis 
