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 medusae 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 Epii^ogiwni 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 Clavarice, which often adorn whole tracts of ground in a 

 w^ood, imitate the structure of corals; Hydneoi 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 Tremellodon 

 gelatinosum, resemble gelatinous sponges. The small stiff" toad-stools (Marasniius), 

 which raise their slender stalks on fallen pine-needles, remind one of the rigid 

 Acetabularide. Other toad-stools, with flat or convex caps exhibiting concentric 

 bands and stripes, such as the different species of Graterellus, have an appearance 

 similar to the salt-water alga known by the name of Padina. Dark species of 

 Geoglossum imitate the brown Fucoidece; 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 saprophj^tes 

 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- 

 galacese, and more especially several grasses, chiefly the Matweed (Nardus strida) 

 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. pi'ostrata, G. glacialis, 

 G. nana, Lomatogonium Carinthiacum), Valeriana celtica, the Scottish asphodel 

 (Tojieldia borealis) of the north, a few grasses, sedges, and rushes (e.g. Agrostis 



