MUSHROOMS 



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MUSHROOMS 



THE STORY OF MUSHROOMS 



USHROOMS, mush'roomz. Clam- 

 my and flowerless are the plants of the mush- 

 room family, a branch of the great fungus 

 group, yet they are among the most interesting 

 and beautiful things to be seen on a tramp 

 through woods or fields. The fruit seen above 

 the ground assumes a vast variety of shapes, 

 from the ordinary umbrella to the less familiar 

 coral-like formation. In color mushrooms 

 range from pure white to delicate pastel shades 

 of pink and lavender; from pale yellow to flam- 

 ing orange and brilliant red; from dull gray to 

 velvety brown. 



A spell of wet weather in spring, summer or 

 fall always means a sudden increase in mush- 

 room growth, for the plants require a great 

 deal of moisture. The home they choose is 

 decaying vegetable matter generally a log or 

 a piece of rotting wood, sometimes hidden un- 

 der leaves or moss. It is the French word for 

 moss that gives us the name mushroom, as 



is the old-fashioned name mushrump. 

 Children usually group all mushrooms under 

 Mgle term, toadstool properly applied 

 only to the unwholesome kind and shun them 

 all as poisonous. Perhaps this is fortunate, for 

 while many kinds of mushrooms may be eaten 

 with safety and relish, there are others, looking 

 so much like them that only an expert botanist 

 ' ry careful observer can tell them apart, 

 which are rank poisons; and between these two 

 extremes are many that cause temporary ill- 

 ness, even though not usually fatal. There is a 

 lit tlr poem by Walter Learned that reads: 

 Five little white-heads peeped out of the mold, 



i the dew waa damp and the night was 

 cold. 

 And they crowded their way through the soil with 



pride : 

 "Hurrah! we are going to be mushrooms!" 



they cried. 



But the sun came up. and the sun came down. 

 And the little white-heads were withered and 



' brown : 



Lon* were th.-lr far*-*, their pride had a fall-- 

 were nothing but toadstools, after all. 

 How the Mushroom Gets Its Food. Like other 

 fungi (which see), mushrooms lack that green 



coloring matter called chlorophyll which is like 

 a fairy cook to ordinary plants, preparing their 

 food from the soil and air and water, with the 

 sunlight acting as assistant chef. Without this 

 "leaf green," the mushroom lives by appropri- 

 ating the food which some other member of the 

 vegetable kingdom has manufactured. As a 

 rule it is satisfied to feed upon an old stump or 

 upon decaying twigs; but now and then it will 

 attack the trunk or branches of a living tree, 

 and unless it is removed it is certain to injure 

 the tree's health. 



Its Life Story. The history of the common 

 table mushroom will give a good idea of how 

 all the members of the family grow, even 

 though there is some variation in different spe- 

 cies. (See picture showing how the mushroom 

 grows.) The tiny button shoving up through 

 the earth is the baby mushroom. It shoots up 

 very quickly sometimes overnight, when there 

 is plenty of moisture and the top keeps swell- 

 ing until there is an umbrella-shaped cap and 

 a stem. The skin on the underside of the cap 

 splits again and again, forming many thin plates 

 called gills, hanging like curtains and radiating 

 from the center. Some mushrooms have a little 

 ragged frill or ring around the stem near the 

 top what is left of the membrane which in the 

 button stage covered the gills like a veil ; while 

 the cup seen at the bottom of the stem in cer- 

 tain varieties is the membrane that enclosed 

 the young plant and was broken through as the 

 plant pushed itself upward. The. table mush- 

 room has no cup, and puffballs never develop 

 even a stem. All over the surface of the gills 

 are tiny dots containing the spores minute, 

 dark-colored grains that perform for the mush- 

 room the same service a seed performs for a 

 flow. -ring plant. When the mushroom is per- 

 fectly ripe the spore drops; if it falls into 

 earth that is moist and rich it will swell and 

 burst, dividing and rrdi vising, until by and by 

 there will be formed a network of slender 

 fibers resembling white felt. This woolly mass 

 is called the spawn or, to use the botanical 

 word so often met with in print, the mycelium. 



