THALLOPHYTES 9I 



rapidity into a stout, hollow stalk, bursts through the peridium, and 

 carries up on its summit the caplike and chambered gleba, the whole 

 structure suggesting a stipe and pileus. The gleba thus exposed deli- 

 quesces into a sHmy, dripping mass with the odor of carrion, which 

 attracts carrion flies, by whose agency the embedded spores are dispersed. 



Lichens 



The Ascomycetes, with a single exception, are the lichen formers (see p. 78), 

 and this exception is a basidiomycete. This lichen is the tropical Cora pavonia, 

 of loose texture, whose mycelium produces basidia at the surface, instead of the 

 ordinary ascocarp. The algal symbiont is Chroococcus or Scylonema. 



