THE COPRINUS TYPE OF FRUIT-BODY 209 



somewhat differently. The gills ripen and shed their spores from 

 below upwards. As the pileus opens out, the necessary inter- 

 lamellar spaces widen from below upwards. However, the entire 

 opening of the pileus, which eventually becomes disc-shaped, is 

 accomplished without "deliquescence." Each gill splits vertically 

 from above and the two halves become pulled out laterally. The 

 expansion of the pileus and the necessary spacing of the gills is 

 thus satisfactorily brought about without autodigestion, which 

 process in these tiny fruit-bodies would be superfluous. 



Massee 1 has recently stated that " Many species included in 

 Coprinus as C. plieatUis and others having dry, non-deli- 

 quescent gills, have no real affinity with this genus." Now 

 that the function of autodigestion has been discovered, this view 

 can no longer be regarded as tenable. Autodigestion alone is not 

 a decisive test for placing a species in the genus Coprinus. 

 In its absence in the smaller species, such as C. plicatilis, 

 Coprinus characters, e.g. thinness of the flesh, general structure 

 and splitting of the gills, protuberant basidia separated by para- 

 physes of a special type, and particularly the ripening and dis- 

 charge of the spores in succession in a direction proceeding from 

 the pileus margin to the pileus centre, are still sufficiently obvious. 

 Even in C. plicatiloides (Fig. 26, p. 70), one of the smallest of all 

 Coprini, where the expanded parasol-like pileus is often only 5 mm. 

 or even less in diameter, the process of spore-discharge proceeds 

 centripetally. It always begins first, and is completed first, 

 around the periphery of the pileus, and the last spores to be set 

 free are those in the neighbourhood of the stipe. The gradual 

 progress of spore-discharge is therefore essentially similar in 

 the diminutive C. plicatiloides and in the relatively gigantic 

 C. comatus. This seems to me to be strong evidence that both 

 species have been rightly placed within the same genus. 



There can be little doubt that some of the smaller and more 

 delicate species of Coprinus are largely dependent on the weather 

 for success in liberating their spores into the air. In very dry 

 weather, especially when it is windy, I have noticed that fruit- 

 bodies of C. plicatilis, growing on a lawn, and those of 



1 G. Massee, Text-Book of Fungi, London, 1906, p. 364. 



O 



