268 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[July, 
Fungus—Fungi—What are Fungi? 
- -<£>- - 
At almost every gathering for agricul tural or hor¬ 
ticultural discussion, there are very apt to be some 
who must speak on every subject, and give an an¬ 
swer to every question. These men when cornered 
find “ electricity ” a convenient refuge; it sounds 
much wiser than a frank “ I don’t know.” When 
Fig. 1.— SEED AND SPORE. 
the obscure blights and other diseases, which attack 
grain and fruit plants, and fill the cultivator with 
surprise and dismay, are discussed, we hear less of 
“ electricity ” as the cause, but of late it is ascribed 
to “fungi.” If one in search of information ask 
these ready talkers “ What fungi; when and where 
do they attack ? ” it is too often the case that their 
whole stock of knowledge is exhausted in saying 
“fungi.” Though the term is often unmeaningly 
used, the answer, giving fungi as the cause of many 
plant troubles, is the right one so far as it goes. 
To be able to destroy or avoid these pests, it is in 
the first place necessary to understand them. They 
are objects of great interest as regards their struc¬ 
ture, habits of growth, methods of propagation, 
etc., and adding to this the pecuniary importance 
of a knowledge of them, we have in Fungi a 
subject which demands our careful consideration. 
Fungi , the plural of fungus , is the name applied 
to a large class of flowerless plants, of which the 
toadstools are the most conspicuous and familiar 
examples. The group is very low, if not the low¬ 
est, in the scale of vegetable life. Many of the 
fungi are exceedingly small, and can only be seen 
with the Compound Microscope. In some the 
whole plant is not more than a 30,000th of an inch 
in length ! Many of the diseases of an epidemic 
nature among both animals and plants, are caused 
by minute fungibut before speaking of these we 
will endeavor to give a general idea of this peculiar 
group, and show how they differ from other plants. 
Unlike ordinary plants, fungi have no leaves, 
stems, roots, flowers, or seeds. Their structure 
is of the very simplest, being entirely cellular, that 
Fig. 2.— bread mould ( Mucor stolonifer). 
is, made up of little cells or sacs. Fungi thrive 
best in warm and moist places. A ready way to 
get some specimens for study, is to place a piece of 
bread or cake where it may be kept warm and 
moist. In the wet weather of summer the house¬ 
wife can many times provide the desired fungi in 
the form of mould, of which many kinds develop 
on various foods with surprising rapidity. They 
by no means confine themselves to articles of food; 
while spending a summer on the sea shore, at the 
end of a week of very warm and wet weather, we 
tcok the Sunday suit from the closet, and found it 
covered from top to toe with fine specimens of 
moulds—even the inside of the boots were blue 
with a forest of fungi. No doubt many readers 
have had an experience very similar to this. 
When the mould first appears upon bread, it con¬ 
sists of a number of very minute threads, or fila¬ 
ments, much resembling a spider’s web, which ex¬ 
tend over and through the bread. These filaments 
increase in number until the whole surface is cov¬ 
ered with a white cottony coating. Each thread 
consists of long slender tubes closed and joined 
end to end. These are the cells, and are filled with 
the matter which has been absorbed from the sub¬ 
stance upon which the fungus grows. The growth 
of a fungus in size is the simple increase in size 
and Dumber of the cells which compose it. These 
threads, composed of rows of cells, are called my¬ 
celium (from the Greek word for fungus), and they 
answer to the roots of higher plants iu that they 
take up the nourishment for the growth of the plant. 
Like all other living things a fungus provides for 
the reproduction of its kind, and in this respect it 
outdoes all other forms of life, both in extent and 
multiplicity of methods. As the formation of seed 
is the end and aim of flowering plants, so the pro¬ 
duction of spores is the final stage in the life of a 
fungus. Seeds and spores are for the same end, 
but in structure they are widely different. A seed 
contains a little plant (embryo) already formed with¬ 
in the protecting seed-coats, while a spore is a 
simple cell, with a thick cell-wall, enclosing a mass 
of homogenous matter called protoplasm. In ger¬ 
mination the seed develops the young plantlet; 
the spore sends out a long and delicate filament. 
To point out the difference between the spore and 
the seed, the two are shown in cross section in fig. 1, 
the spore a being magnified several hundred times. 
The spore is alike throughout, while in the seed, b, 
there is a little plant, c , enclosed by the seed coats. 
At d is shown the process of germination of a spore, 
and e gives the germinating plantlet of the seed. 
In bread-mould small stalks will rise in a short 
time from the cobwebby mass, and as they grow 
their upper ends will gradually increase in size and 
become dark colored. In these enlarged tips the 
spores are formed, and when ripe, burst through 
the covering and are carried away by any passing 
breath of wind, to form another crop of mould on 
some bread or other nourishing substance. 
Figure 2 shows one kind of bread mould, (Mucor 
stolonifer). It will be seen that the “ roots,” a, are 
separated from the bread. The capsule, b ,is ripe,and 
the spores are being discharged. The oldest plant 
is at the left, and from it a filament has grown out, 
fallen to the ground at c, and formed a new plant, 
which, in turn, has given rise to another at d. This 
mucor is sometimes called the “ strawberry mould,” 
because it forms new plants by “ runners,” much 
after the way of the strawberry. In the common 
blue mould which grows very luxuriantly on many 
articles, especially cheese, we have the spores 
borne naked in rows on branches which are quite 
regularly disposed near the tip of the stalk which 
bears them. It forms a denser coat of threads, and 
the spore-bearing stalks are much shorter and more 
thickly set than in the rnucors. It forms a thick and 
even crust, and when the blue spores are ripe the 
characteristic color is manifest. It is shown on the 
left hand in fig. 3. When seen under the microscope 
a single head of spores resembles an artist’s brush 
or pencil, hence its scientific name (Penicillium crus- 
taceum). The “ cake mould ” usually disposes it¬ 
self in circular spots on cakes, preserves, and other 
like foods containing “ sweetening.” The myce¬ 
lium is of the ordinary kind, and the spores are ar¬ 
ranged in rows about a globular head. It is the most 
beautiful of them all, the spores being spheres 
and regularly disposed. It is known in science as 
Eurotium (Aspergillus) glaucus, and is shown on 
the right in fig. 3, with its mycelium intertwined, 
as is often the case, with that of the blue mould. 
All these spores thus far described, are formed by 
a simple cutting off, or dividing up, of the fungus 
plant, and may be compared to the bulbs of “ top 
onions,” bulblets of the Tiger-lily, and some other 
flowering plants. All such methods of reproduc¬ 
tion are called non-sexual. The sexual organs of 
flowering plants are the stamens (male) and pistils 
(female) of the flower, and a seed is produced only 
by united action of these two organs. In fungi, 
something similar, though more simple, occurs, the 
result of which is a spore, which so far as it is pro¬ 
duced by the action of two different parts, more 
nearly resembles a seed than does the kind first 
described. This spore is produced by the union of 
the contents of two cells to form a new one, which 
is thereby specially endowed with vitality and 
capable, under favorable conditions, of forming 
a new plant. In figure 4 is shown a magnified view 
of this sexual process in the bread mould. The 
tips of two threads swell, a, a, come together, b, the 
walls where they are in contact break away, and the 
contents of the large cell at the end of each thread 
mingle, as shown at c. A dark heavy covering is 
soon developed, the attached threads wither away, 
and a sexual spore, d, is produced. These spores 
serve to keep the species over the winter or other 
trying times. The small, delicate, non-sexual spores, 
which are produced with such rapidity and in such 
great abundance, are for the rapid propagation 
of the fungus when circumstances are favorable. 
Some Notions about Transplanting. 
In this month late cabbages, celery, and many 
- --- other plants in the 
Kitchen Garden, and 
China Asters and other 
j annuals in the Flower 
Garden are taken from 
the seed beds and set 
where they are to com¬ 
plete their growth—are 
transplanted. In trans- 
j planting, some persons 
make frequent failures, 
while others will make 
every plant grow. This 
is ascribed to “luck,” 
while really the differ¬ 
ence in the two cases 
is due to the fact that 
the one does all that is 
possible to prevent suc¬ 
cess, and the other, per¬ 
haps without knowing 
it, observes all the re¬ 
quirements of the plant, 
and his “luck” is sim- 
plauts require that large 
