226 



irVCOLOGY 



to the tear-like drops of water pressed out of the living hyphal cells. 

 The mature sporophore is an amber-brown color covered with anasto- 

 mosing wrinkles (Fig. 89) over the surfaceof which the basidia bearing 

 basidiospores are borne. Two basidiospores are Ijorne on pointed 

 sterigma by each basidium. As the fungi by means of its conducting 

 hyphai is independent of local water supplies, it can grow in wood, even 

 if protected by an external coat of paint, or varnish, and the builder is 

 chagrined to find such wood work crumble away beneath the coats of 

 paint. Mycodcndron is a curious fungus with a fruit body which 

 suggests a muflin stand, or a pagoda with superimposed, rounded, 



Fig. 89- 



-Fruiting stage of dry-rot fungus (Merulius lacrymans) . {After Clinton, 

 G. P., Rep. Conn. .Agric. Exper. Slat., pi. xxviii, 1906.) 



sf)ore-bearing shelves through which the central stalk runs from one-half 

 to the next above. Mycodendron paradoxum has been collected on 

 wood in Madagascar. 



PoLYPOROiDE^. — This Subfamily includes tough or woody fungi 

 found generally on wood as bracket-like fruit bodies of different 

 forms and sizes. The spore-bearing surface, a hymenium, consists of 

 furrows, or tubes. In the perennial-fruited forms, the tubes are often 

 found in layers. Mycologists have made a natural division of the dif- 

 ferent forms of fruit bodies into those which are resupinate, the aimual 

 peroid species, the perennial peroid forms and those species which are 

 like the agarics. The various forms are of interest to the scientific my- 



