540 



HUTCHINSON'S POPULAR BOTANY 



verting it into touchwood. The growing point of the mycele comes in 

 contact with a wood-cell, and pours out a ferment which has the power 

 to break down the hard wood into cellulose, which further dissolves into 

 a fluid which the mycele can then absorb. 



The mycele of a toadstool that springs from a bed of dead leaves acts 



upon the cells of the leaves 

 in the same manner. They 

 crumble into humus, in 

 which condition their 

 material is again available 

 for nourishing the roots of 

 the green plants. Some 

 forms of Fungi appear to 

 exist only in the mycele 

 stage, and are known as 

 Mycorhiza. This Mycorhiza 

 has been found to be a 

 pretty constant attendant 

 on cupuliferous trees oak, 

 beech, alder, hazel, etc. in- 

 vesting the rootlets as with 

 a spider's web, and by 

 breaking up the humus with 

 its ferment reducing it to 

 a condition which enables 

 the rootlets to absorb it. 

 It is the mycele again that 

 is the destructive agent in 

 "Dry Rot" (Merulius 

 lachrymans), that in this 

 country chiefly affects 

 worked timber in houses, 

 and spreads even through 

 mortar so long as it has its 

 base in the wood-work. 

 The huge fan-shaped sporo- 

 phores may be cleared 

 away, and the house-owner 

 fondly imagine that he has got rid of the pest, but the stout beams will 

 continue to give way and the flooring to crumble like pasteboard. Nothing 

 short of clearing out all the affected wood and the ramifying mycele 

 and the pickling of new material in some known fungicide will put an 

 end to the trouble. 



In some of the species that attack trees this mycele runs up between 



Photo by] [E. & 



FIG. 685. JEW'S-KAR FUNGUS (Hirneola 

 auricula-judce). 



Growing upon old Elder branches. It is an example of the Tremellinese. 



Several stages in the development of the sporophore are shown. Some 



specimens bear a remarkable likeness to a human ear. 



