CHAPTER II.—DIFFERENTIATION OF THE THALLUS.—SPOROPHORES. 45 
3. SPOROPHORES. 
Section X. The sporophores! (Fruchtträger) are branches of the thallus of 
peculiar form which spring from the mycelium and produce and bear the organs of 
reproduction. The term organs of reproduction designates the germs of new in- 
dividuals; by,indinidual we understand the dron as Häckel uses the word, and the 
mother-cells which immediately produce them. These organs are distinguished 
a.cordirg to the particular case by different names, spores, gonidia, basidia, asci, 
&z., and the structures that bear them may have corresponding names, as gonidio- 
phores, &c. Asa Fungus may have more than one kind of organ of reproduction, 
as will be shown in the sequel, more than one of the special forms just named may 
appear on the same species. 
It has been already intimated that the sporophores have been compared with the 
flowers or inflorescences of phanerogams, because their development usually closes, as 
in the phanerogams, with the formation of a number of organs of reproduction, by 
which their growth is limited either absolutely or for atime. This limited growth is 
accompanied by a form and structure more sharply and characteristically differen- 
tiated than that of most mycelia, and in many cases by a comparatively large develop- 
ment. The sporophores therefore are not only the most characteristically constructed 
part of the plant, but also the most striking on account of their form and size; hence 
they used often to be taken for the whole plant, and are also at the present time the 
chief subject of description in botanical works. 
It follows from what has now been said, that we have to distinguish in the 
sporophore generally between the points of origin of the organs of reproduction them- 
selves and the other parts of the structure which may serve them as supports or 
envelopes or the like, and which in each case bear some conventional name. These 
parts are almost always raised above the substratum, and are firmly attached io it 
and fed from it through the mycelium. The mycelium sometimes, not always, has 
filiform or hair-like organs of attachment, rfzzords, in the shape of branches of the 
hyphae which spring from the base of the sporophore and complete the provision for 
its secure attachment and for the supply of nourishment, at least of that part of it 
which it obtains from water. They have received the name of secondary mycelium from 
their resemblance to the primary mycelium. It has not been ascertained in any in- 
stance, whether under favourable conditions they are capable of assuming the normal 
characters of a mycelium and producing sporophores; in many Fungi, for example, 

1 [Compounds of the Greek word »apmös and such terms as ‘fruit’ and ‘fructification’ are 
better used only for structures which have some direct connection with the sexual act; hence the 
term ‘carpophore,’ the more exact translation of the German Fruchtträger, as well as the terms 
‘fruit’ and ‘fructification,’ which under this limitation would not convey the sense of Fruchtträger in 
this place, have been avoided and the more comprehensive expression ‘sporophore’ is introduced 
here as its rendering. Berkeley’s specific use of ‘sporophore’ for what Léveillé had termed 
“basidium ’ is no obstacle to the use of the word in the sense here indicated, as the term ‘ basidium’ 
is now a generally accepted one. The more recent application of the word ‘sporophore’ to 
designate that stage in the life-history of a plant which is the product of an ovum and which as 
a whole or in part is concerned with the formation of spores need be no objection to its use here; 
the terms ‘sporocarp’ and ‘ sporophyte’ sufficiently denote different cases of that spore-producing 
stage (see section XXXIII).] 
