FUNGI AND MODERN AFFAIRS 



By J. Ramsbottom, O. B. E. 

 British Museum (Natural History) 



It is a little surprising that fungi should have received so little con- 

 sideration from academic botanists, for they are more numerous in 

 species and in individuals than is the rest of the plant kingdom. They 

 are classed in the vegetable kingdom, for with the old divisions, plants, 

 animals, and minerals, there is nowhere else for them. But they are not 

 plants in the ordinary sense of the word as they have no chlorophyll and 

 there is no evidence that they were derived from organisms so provided. 

 A great amount of research has been carried out during the last half- 

 century to ascertain the precise methods by which green plants build up 

 carbohydrates ; but comparatively little attention has been paid to the 

 manifold and diverse physiological processes by which fungi obtain 

 their nutriment. In their search for food, fungi play many parts in the 

 drama of Nature and in modern affairs. 



To many the word fungus conveys the idea of something mysterious 

 or foreboding: to others mushrooms and toadstools. J. Bauhin 

 appeared to combine the two ideas when he derived the word from 

 funus (funeral) and ago (to put in motion), a derivation which John 

 Ray considered appropriate even if possibly not correct. 



What is a mushroom? The term is often loosely applied to those 

 larger fungi which are edible, it being assumed that only the field 

 mushroom and possibly one or more of its near allies are safe to eat ; the 

 rest, assumed to be poisonous, are grouped together as toadstools. But 

 the assumption puts the facts the wrong way round, for there are less 

 than a dozen species which are in any way poisonous ; the vast majority 

 are harmless. It would be illogical to speak of even the 300 or more 

 edible species as mushrooms and the others as toadstools; it seems 

 preferable to call all agarics "toadstools," restricting "mushroom" for 

 the species of the genus Psalliota : in this way, moreover, some of our 

 insular and peculiar prejudice against them might be toned down. 



1 Substance of three lectures delivered at the Royal Institution on February 15, 22, and 

 29, 1944. Reprinted by permission, with additions by the author (enclosed in brackets), 

 from Nature, vol. 153, May 27, 1944. 



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