The differences in fertility between the two kinds of thallus in Collema crispum may be recalled[649]. Baur considered that development of the carpogonia was dependant on the presence of spermatia: a strong argument for the necessity of fertilization by these. The conditions in Parmelia acetabulum, also recorded by Baur, lend themselves less easily to any conclusion. On the thallus of that species the spermogonia and carpogonia present are out of all proportion to the very few apothecia that are ultimately formed. Though Baur suggested that cross-fertilization might be necessary, he admits that the development may be vegetative and so uninfluenced by the presence or absence of spermatia.
It is the very frequent occurrence of the trichogyne as an integral part of the carpogonium that constitutes the strongest argument for fertilization by spermatia. There is a possibility that such an organ may have been universal at one time both in fungi and in lichens, and that it has mostly degenerated through loss of function in the former, as it has disappeared in many instances in lichens. Again, there is but a scanty and vestigial record of spermogonia in Ascomycetes. They may have died out, or they may have developed into the asexual pycnidia which are associated with so many species. If we take that view we may trace the same tendency in lichens, as for instance in the capacity of various spermatia to germinate, though in lichen spermogonia there has been apparently less change from the more primitive condition. It is also possible that some process of nuclear fusion, or more probably of conjugation, takes place in the ascogonial cells, and that in the latter case the only fusion, as in some (or most) fungi, is between the two nuclei in the ascus.
If it be conceded that fully developed carpogonia with emergent trichogynes, accompanied by spermogonia and spermatia, represent fertilization, or the probability of fertilization, then the process may be assumed to take place in a fairly large and widely distributed series of lichens. Copulation between the spermatium and the trichogyne has been seen by Stahl[650], Baur[651] and by F. Bachmann[652] in Collema. In Physcia pulverulenta Darbishire[653] could not prove copulation in the earlier stages, but he found what he took to be the remains of emptied spermatia adhering to the tips of old trichogynes. Changes in the trichogyne following on presumed copulation have been demonstrated by several workers in the Collemaceae, and open communication as a result of fertilization between the cells of the ascogonium has been described in two species. This coenocytic condition of the ascogonium (or archicarp), considered by Darbishire and others as an evidence of fertilization, has been demonstrated by Fitzpatrick[654] in the fungus Rhizina undulata. The walls between the cells of the archicarp in that Ascomycete became more or less open, so that the ascogenous hyphae growing from the central cells were able easily to draw nutrition from the whole coenocyte, but no process of fertilization in Rhizina preceded the breaking down of the septa and no fusion of nuclei was observed until the stage of ascus formation.
The real distinction between fertile and vegetative hyphae lies, according to Harper[655], in the relative size of the nuclei. F. Bachmann speaks of one large nucleus in the spermatium of Collema pulposum which would indicate sexual function. There is however very little nuclear history of lichens known at any stage until the beginning of ascus formation, when fusion of two nuclei certainly take place as in fungi to form the definitive nucleus of the ascus.
The whole matter may be summed up in Fünfstück’s[656] statement that: “though research has proved as very probable that fertilization takes place, it is an undoubted fact that no one has observed any such process.”
F. Final Stages of Apothecial Development
The emergence of the lichen apothecium from the thallus, and the form it takes, are of special interest, as, though it is essentially fungal in structure, it is subject to various modifications entailed by symbiosis.
a. Open or closed Apothecia. Schwendener[657] drew attention to two types of apothecia directly influenced by the thallus: those that are closed at first and only open gradually, and those which are, as he says, open from the first. The former occur in genera and species in which the thallus has a stoutish cortex, as, for instance, in Lobaria where the young fructification has all the appearance of an opening perithecium. The open apothecia (primitus aperta) are found in non-corticate lichens, in which case the pioneer paraphyses arrive at the surface easily and without any converging growth. Similar apothecia are borne directly on the hypothallus at the periphery, or between the thalline areolae, and they are also characteristic of thin or slender thalli as in Coenogonium.
In both types of apothecium, the paraphyses pierce the cortex ([Fig. 100]) and secure the emergence of the developing ascomata.