Mushroom Spore-prints
THE dusty puff-ball, floating its faint trail of smoke in the breeze from the ragged flue at its dome-shaped roof as from an elfin tepee, or perhaps enveloping our feet in its dense purple cloud as we chance to step upon it in the path, is familiar to every one—always enthusiastically welcomed by the small boy, to whom it is always a challenge for a kick, and a consequent demonstration of smoke worthy of a Fourth-of-July celebration.
A week ago this glistening gray bag, so free with its dust-puff at the slightest touch, was solid in substance and as white as cottage cheese in the fracture.
But in a later stage this clear white fracture would have appeared speckled or peppered with gray spots, and the next day entirely gray and much softened, and, later again, brown and apparently in a state of decay. But this is not decay. This moist brown mass becomes powdery by evaporation, and the puff-ball is now ripe, and intent only on posterity.
Each successive squeeze as we hold it between our fingers yields its generous response in a puff of brown smoke, which melts away apparently into air. But the puff-ball does not end in mere smoke. This vanishing purple cloud is composed of tiny atoms, so extremely minute as to require the aid of a powerful microscope to reveal their shapes. Each one of these atoms, so immaterial and buoyant as to be almost without gravity, floating away upon the slightest breath, or even wafted upward by currents of warm air from the heated earth, has within itself the power of reproducing another clump of puff-balls if only fortune shall finally lodge it in congenial soil. These spores are thus analogous to the seeds of ordinary plants. We have seen the myriadfold dispersion of its potential atoms in the cloud of spore-smoke from the puff-ball, but who ever thinks of a spore-cloud from a mushroom or a toadstool? Yet the same method is followed by all the other fungi, but with less conspicuousness. The puff-ball gives a visible salute, but any one of the common mushrooms or toadstools will afford us a much prettier and more surprising account of itself if we but give it the opportunity. This big yellow toadstool out under the poplar-tree, its golden cap studded with brownish scurfy warts, its under surface beset with closely plaited laminæ or gills, who could ever associate the cloud of dry smoke with this moist, creamy-white surface? We may sit here all day and watch it closely, but we shall see no sign of anything resembling smoke or dust. But even so, a filmy mist is continually floating away from beneath its golden cap, the eager breeze taking such jealous care of the continual shower that our eyes fail to perceive a hint of it.
Do you doubt it? You need wait but a few moments for a proof of the fact in a pretty experiment, which, when once observed, will certainly be resorted to as a frequent pastime in leisure moments when the toadstool or mushroom is at hand.
Spore Surface of a Polyporus
Here is a very ordinary-looking specimen growing beside the stone steps at our back door perhaps. Its top is gray; its gills beneath are fawn-color. We may shake it as rudely as we will, and yet we shall get no response such as the puff-ball will give us. But let us lay it upon a piece of white paper, gills downward, on the mantel, and cover it with a tumbler or finger-bowl, so as to absolutely exclude the least admission of air. At the expiration of five minutes, perhaps, we may detect a filmy, pinkish-yellow tint on the paper, following beneath the upraised border of the cap, like a shadow faintly lined with white. In a quarter of an hour the tinted deposit is perceptible across the room; and in an hour, if we carefully raise the mushroom, the perfect spore-print is revealed in all its beauty—a pink-brown disk with a white centre, which represents the point of contact of the cut stem, and white radiating lines, representing the edges of the thin gills, many of them as fine and delicate as a cobweb.
Spore Surface of an Agaric
Every fresh species will yield its surprise in the markings and color of the prints.
These spore-deposits are of course fugitive, and will easily rub off at the slightest touch. But inasmuch as many of these specimens, either from their beauty of form or exquisite color, or for educational or scientific purposes, it will be desirable to preserve, I append simple rules for the making of the prints by a process by which they will become effectually "fixed," and thus easily kept without injury.
DIRECTIONS FOR MAKING A MUSHROOM SPORE-PRINT
Take a piece of smooth white writing-paper and coat its surface evenly with a thin solution of gum-arabic, dextrine, or other mucilage, and allow it to dry. Pin this, gummed side uppermost, to a board or table, preferably over a soft cloth, so that it will lie perfectly flat. To insure a good print the mushroom specimen should be fresh and firm, and the gills or spore-surface free from breaks or bruises.
Cut the stem off about level with the gills, then lay the mushroom, spore-surface downward, upon the paper, and cover with a tumbler, finger-bowl, or other vessel with a smooth, even rim, to absolutely exclude the slightest ingress of air.
After a few hours have passed by, perhaps even less, the spores will be seen through the glass on the paper at the extreme edge of the mushroom, their depth of color indicating the density of the deposit. If we now gently lift the glass, and with the utmost care remove the fungus, perhaps by the aid of pins previously inserted, in a perfectly vertical direction, without the slightest side motion, the spore-print in all its beauty will be revealed—perhaps a rich brown circular patch with exquisite radiating white lines, marking the direction and edges of the gills, if an Agaric; perhaps a delicate pink, more or less clouded disk, here and there distinctly and finely honey-combed with white lines, indicating that our specimen is one of the polypores, as a Boletus. Other prints will yield rich golden disks, and there will be prints of red, lilac, greens, oranges, salmon-pinks, and browns and purples, variously lined in accordance with the number and nature of the gills or pores. Occasionally we shall look in vain for our print, which may signify that our specimen had already scattered its spores ere we had found it, or, what is more likely, that the spores are invisible upon the paper, owing to their whiteness, in which case a piece of black paper must be substituted for the white ground, when the response will be beautifully manifest in a white tracery upon the black background. One of these, from the Amanita muscarius, is reproduced in our illustration. If the specimen is left too long, the spore-deposit is continued upward between the gills, and may reach a quarter of an inch in height, in which case, if extreme care in lifting the cap is used, we observe a very realistic counterfeit of the gills of the mushroom in high relief upon the paper. A print of this kind is of course very fragile, and must be handled with care. But a comparatively slight deposit of the spores, without apparent thickness, will give us the most perfect print, while at the same time yielding the full color. Such a print may also be fixed by our present method so as to withstand considerable rough handling, all that is required being to lay the print upon a wet towel until the moisture has penetrated through the paper and reached the gum. The spores are thus set, and, upon drying the paper, are quite securely fixed. Indeed, the moisture often exuded by the confined fungus beneath the glass proves sufficient to dampen the mucilage and set the spores.
A number of prints may be obtained from a single specimen.
To those of my readers interested in the science of this spore-shower I give sectional illustrations of examples of the two more common groups of mushrooms—the Agaric, or gilled mushroom, and the Polyporus, or tube-bearing mushroom. The entire surface of both gills and pores is lined with the spore-bearing membrane, or hymenium, the spores falling directly beneath their point of departure as indicated; in the case of the Agaric, in radiating lines in correspondence with the spaces between the gills, and in Polyporus in a tiny pile directly beneath the opening of each pore.