A.—Fly Agaric.
Amanita muscarius. B.—Edible Boletus.
Boletus edulis. C.—Puff-ball.
Lycoperdum gemmatum. D.—Chanterelle.
Cantharellus cibarius.
—Fungi.—
The species are very numerous, but their identification is not easy, and requires serious application. The two figured are exceedingly common in some districts. Various species of Cup-moss (Cladonia) will be met on heaths, sandy hedge-banks, etc. They have a flat crust-like base, from which arise pale grey tubes or cups, bearing at their tips the bright scarlet, pinky-brown, or even black fruits. A more common form in woods and on banks is Cladonia pyxidata, with the tube greatly increasing in width upwards. Cladonia rangiferina is the well-known Reindeer-moss, of inestimable value in extreme Northern latitudes as the food of the useful animal whose name it bears; it may be found in abundance in this country on heaths and hillsides covering the ground beneath the heather.
The other species figured in our plate, the Wall-lichen (Physcia parietina), is also very common, forming the familiar orange stains upon walls and maritime rocks. A closely allied species, the grey Parmelia saxatilis, is common on tree-trunks: it has been used time out of mind in the production of a brownish-red dye for wools. Several others of the same genus are valuable in a similar direction: our own Parmelia perlata, which grows on tree trunks, is largely imported from the Canaries as a dye-weed, and has been sold at as high a rate as £200 per ton.
Lichens are generally of slow growth and long life. Mr. Berkeley kept watch upon a patch of Lecidia geographica for twenty-five years, and found little change in it all that time. The Rev. Hugh Macmillan recounts how he found on the top of Schiehallion a species of lichen encrusting quartz rocks, which exhibited beneath the lichen the marks of glacial action as distinct and unchanged by atmospheric effects as though the glacier had only passed over them yesterday. He suggests that the lichen may reckon its days back very nearly if not quite to the glacial period in Britain!
There are upwards of a thousand British species, and the best list of them will be found in “Crombie’s British Museum Catalogue of Lichens,” of which the first part was published in 1894.
Mosses (Musci). Plate 127.
Another important tribe of flowerless plants, to which we must be content with merely giving the general characters, for in a volume primarily intended as a guide to wild-flowers we must not occupy too much space with plants that do not produce flowers. At the same time, we believe the non-botanical among our readers will be glad to have a slight introduction, upon the strength of which they may cultivate the closer acquaintance of a most beautiful and interesting group of plants.
A. Three-cornered Hypnum (Hypnum triquetrum) is a common species on woodland banks, growing in branching tufts. The stems are well clothed with leaves, which consist of a single layer of cells; there is therefore no necessity for the breathing pores (stomates) found on the leaves of flowering plants and giving access to the tissues beneath the cuticle. The leaves of mosses are not provided with stomates; neither are they stalked, but attached directly to the stem by their base. From the sides of the stem at intervals a number of brown, hair-like threads are given off, and each of these ends in a brown, pear-shaped nodding organ, the spore capsule. These capsules are each closed with a lid (operculum), beneath which is a double row of teeth, their tips directed towards the centre of the mouth. When the spores are ripe the operculum is cast off, and these teeth erect themselves to allow the minute spores to escape. The teeth (forming the peristome) of mosses are always some multiple of four; in Hypnum each row contains sixteen.