r 



O^TAT 



^D'EPARTMENT 

 OF AGRICULTURE 



OFBICE Oji 

 llK F ORM ATfo 



WITH UITCLE SAIL'S ITATTJRALISTS. 



SPS.AXIITG TI>^; 10 ICinutes. 



Release Friday. July 12,1930. 



iTOT FOH PUBLICATION 



AiT,COUIJCE ISTT : Our Wilds ?{aii has teen on his usual visit to Uncle Sam's 

 Naturalists. ITow he is going to tell us what they told him, atout some of the 

 life in the woods. You know, there is :.;ore to a woods thrr. trees. For in- 

 stance, there are the other plants, which get their living off the trees 



All right, Yx. ^ilds ?:an, pioll up a toad stool. Sit down, aiid tell us ahout 

 some of those things 



— ooOoo — 



Let's get riglit into the heart of the woods. Before we have gone far, 

 we may even be at the very heart of one of those fine old trees. 



You've £?J.l seen those picturesque bracket fungi which sometimes grow on 

 the side of trees. You have also seen toad stools around the roots. 



Well, Dr. Carl Hartley tells me that those brackets, and toad-stools, and 

 some of their kin with which most folks are not so familiax, cause a rotting at 

 the heart of the tree. Dr. Hartley is a specialist in forest pathologj' of the 

 United States Department of Agriculture, and he estimates that from the stand- 

 point of timber production heart rots are the most seriour; of all the diseases 

 of our native forest trees. 



Of course, you understand, it is not the bracket or the toad-stool itself 

 which does the damage. The active rot-producers are tiny single threads which 

 grow into the heart-wood and get their food from it. Those tiny threads are the 

 growing parts of the various fungi. And, Dr. "artley says, nearly all known 

 diseases of forest trees are due to fungi of one sort or another. All the ftmgi 

 seem to be degenerate forms of plent life closely kin to the plants which form 

 the green scum on ponds. 



The toad-stools and brackets and the like sje the fruit-bodies of the 

 fvingi. They produce the spores, or seed, as it '.•'ere, by which the rot-causing 

 fungi are spread from one tree to another by the wind or other agent. 



A toad-stool is not frog- furniture but really a spore-factory. Those so- 

 called gills or ribs or pores on the underside of the toad-stool are just a 

 means of increasing the spore surface. The more spores the better the chance 

 for the fungi to spread. 



