194 



BEGINNERS' BOTANY 



and serve to disseminate the fungus during the summer on other 

 wheat plants or grasses. Late in the season, teleutospores are 

 again produced, completing the life cycle of the plant. 



Many rusts besides Fucdnia graminis produce different spore 

 forms on different plants. The phenomenon is called heterxcistii, 

 and was first shovvn to exist in the wheat rust. Curiously enough, 

 the peasants of Europe had observed and asserted that barberry 

 bushes cause wheat to blight long before science explained the 

 relation between the cluster-cups on barberry and the rust on 

 wheat. The true relation was actually demonstrated, as has since 

 been done for many other rusts on their respective hosts, by sow- 

 ing the secidiospores on healthy wheat plants and thus producing 



Anmracnose CatiKer 



Fig. 285. — How a Parasitic Fungus works. Anthracnose on a bean pod 

 entering the bean beneath. (Whetzel.) 



the rust. The cedar apple is another rust, producing the curious 

 swellings often found on the branches of red cedar trees. In the 

 spring the teleutospores ooze out from the " apple " in brown- 

 ish yellow masses. It has been found that these attack various 

 fruit trees, producing secidia on their leaves. Fig. 285 explains 

 how a parasitic fungus works. 



Puffbalh, mushrooms, toadstools, and shelf fungi. — These 

 represent what are called the higher fungi, because of the size and 

 complexity of the plant body as well as from the fact that they 

 seem to stand at the end of one hne of evolution. The mycelial 

 threads grow together in extensive strands in rotten wood or in 

 the soil, and send out large complex growths of mycelium in con- 



