A treatise on the esculent funguses of England / containing an account of their classical history, uses, characters, development, structure, nutritious properties, modes of cooking and preserving, etc.

by David Badham

DEVELOPMENT OF SEEDS.

The mode in which the organs immediately containing the seeds are formed, differs according to the family. In the tribe of puff-balls, where the seed is formed in the interior of the fungus, there is no hymenium; a few of the internal cells (when the Lycoperdon has attained its full size) begin to enlarge, and these in a short time are found to contain small granules, generally of a determinate number, and moistened by a fluid secreted from within the walls. In such funguses as have an hymenium it is only some of the superficial cells, and these in a particular position in reference to the receptacle, that contain seeds; though perfect identity of structure throughout, is evinced in a conclusive manner if we invert the head of a young fungus on its stalk; for then these thecæ begin to form and to fill themselves with seed, not on the side where they were about to do so previous to this inversion of the head, but on that which was the uppermost and sterile surface, and which, now that it is the undermost, has become prolific. The expansion of a fungus, according to Vittadini, is effected as follows:—“These thecæ,” of which we have been speaking, “as they swell, become distended with the contained seed, and mostly so at their free extremity, since they have more room for expansion in that direction than at the other, which is impacted into the substance of the pileus; in consequence of this, a series of wedges are formed which, as the seed continues to distend them, force out the pileus, loosen its marginal connections with the stalk, uncurl its involuted borders, and finally open up its cells, pores, and sinuses.”[109]

In those subterranean funguses which mature their seeds below the surface of the ground, the lower portion, so soon as this is accomplished in the upper, suddenly takes to grow upwards, carrying along with it the bag, which, on reaching the surface of the ground, bursts its envelopes and scatters its prolific dust to the winds. All funguses, as has already been observed, have in all probability spores, though in a few instances, of byssoid growths, (Hyphas, Himantias, and Æthelias,) these are not apparent; in most cases too, they are attached to an hymenium, into which, or on the surface of which, they are placed till ripe. One very large tribe, by far the largest, are called Hymenomycetes, from ὑμήν, a membrane, and μύκος, a fungus; i. e. funguses with a seed membrane: to distinguish them from those other kinds, very small numerically in proportion to themselves, Gasteromycetes, in which the seeds, arranged and stored away in particular receptacles, named sporanges or thecæ, are with them included in the belly (γαστήρ) of the fungus, as is the case in truffles and puff-balls. The hymenium, like that curiously doubled-down sheet of paper which conjurors turn into so many shapes, assumes a great variety of forms; running down the gills of the mushrooms and the plaits of the Cantharellus, up into the tubes of the Boletuses; sheathing the vegetable teeth of Hydna, forming an intricate labyrinth of anastomosing plates in Dædalea; now rising into little rough eminences on the surface of the Thelephoræ, and now affording a smooth investment to that of the Clavariæ. It is covered with a veil, which disappears so soon as the spores begin to ripen, and its protection is no longer required; seen under the microscope, it appears to be wholly made up of thecæ.