[Sidenote: =Puff-ball spore-clouds=]
Our common 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. To
the mycophagist connoisseur, on the alert for every delectable fungus
morsel for his fastidious appetite, the Puff-ball is indeed pleasantly
familiar, though a specimen in such a powdery stage as the above is
apt to bring only regrets that its discovery has been thus delayed,
for in its earlier firm white stage he knows it at his table as a most
delicate entrée of "mock omelet."
The old-time country physician gathered its powdery bag and carefully
preserved it for another purpose, its spongy, dusty contents having
been a time-honored remedy as a styptic, or for the arrest of
hemorrhage from wounds. But by no class of the community perhaps is it
so enthusiastically welcomed as 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. In this condition, sliced and fried, it would have
proven a veritable delicacy upon our table, quite suggesting an omelet
in consistency and flavor, and in size also, if perchance we had been
favored with one of the larger specimens, which frequently approaches
the dimensions of a football.
[Sidenote: =Development of spores=]
But in a later stage this clear white fracture would have appeared
speckled or peppered with gray spots (see page 271), 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
by evaporation becomes powdery, and the Puff-ball is now _ripe_, and
preparing for posterity.
[Sidenote: =Buoyant spore-atoms=]
[Sidenote: =Number of spores=]
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 thus 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. The number of these
vital atoms or spores in a single Puff-ball is almost past computation.
Fries, however, an eminent fungologist, went to some pains to estimate
this number, and, referring to a certain puff-ball, says: "The spores
are infinite. In a single individual of _Reticularia maxima_ I have
reckoned ten millions so subtle as to resemble thin smoke as light
as if raised by evaporation, and dispersed in so many ways--by the
sun's attraction, by insects, by adhesion and elasticity--that it is
difficult to conceive the spots from which they could be excluded."
[Sidenote: =Spore-cloud from mushrooms=]
We have seen the myriad-fold dispersion of its potential atoms in the
cloud of spore-smoke, but who ever thinks of a spore-cloud from a
mushroom or a toadstool? Yet the method of the Puff-ball is followed
by all the other fungi, with only 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, albeit a
filmy emanation is continually eluding us, 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.
[Sidenote: =Catching the spores=]
Do you doubt it? You need wait but a few moments for a visible
demonstration 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 available.
[Sidenote: =A spore-portrait=]
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-colored. 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 spore-tint portrait of
the under surface of the mushroom--a pink-brown disk with a white
centre, which indicates 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.
Every fresh species experimented with will yield its surprise in the
markings and color of the prints.
[Illustration: MAKING THE PRINT]
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 and "fixing" of the prints by a process which was
original with the writer, and which he has found most effective for
their preservation.
[Sidenote: =Making and fixing spore-prints=]
[Sidenote: =Various colors of spores=]
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, 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, 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 is 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 varying red, lilac, green, orange,
salmon-pink, and brown and purple, variously lined in accordance with
the nature of their respective parent gills or pores.
[Illustration: PLATE XXXV.--SPORE-SURFACE OF AN AGARIC]
[Illustration: PLATE XXXVI.--SPORE-SURFACE OF POLYPORUS (BOLETUS)]
[Sidenote: =Invisible prints=]
[Sidenote: =Fixing the print=]
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 black or colored paper
must be substituted for the white ground, when the spores will be
beautifully manifest in a white tracery upon the darker background. One
of these, from the _Amanita muscarius_, is reproduced in Plate 37. 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 usage, by laying the paper upon a wet towel until the moisture
has penetrated through and reached the gum. The spores are thus set,
and, upon drying the paper, are securely fixed. Indeed, the moisture
exuded by the confined fungus beneath the glass is often sufficient to
set the spores.
A number of prints may be obtained successively from a single specimen
gathered at its fruitful prime.
[Sidenote: =Agarics and Polypores=]
To those of my readers interested in the science of this spore-shower
I give 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 being
produced in fours from each of the crowded sporophores, and, where all
air is absolutely excluded, permitting them to fall 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, directly beneath the opening of each pore, whose
inner surface is lined with the sporophores, as shown in Plate 36.
[Sidenote: =Spore-mist from an Agaric=]
This dust-shower is continuous in nature after the perfect ripening of
the spores, but it is almost impossible to conceive of such an entire
absence of moving air under natural conditions as to permit even a
visible hint of the spore-shower to appear beneath its respective
fungus. An exception to this rule is sometimes to be seen in fungi of
massed growth--as, for example, beneath such a cluster as that shown on
page 147. Indeed, a correspondent recently described such a cluster as
"enveloped in a mist of its own spores floating away in the apparently
still air."
[Illustration: PLATE XXXVII.--SPORE-PRINT OF AMANITA MUSCARIUS]
[Illustration: PLATE XXXVIII.--ACTION OF SLIGHT DRAUGHT ON SPORES]
[Sidenote: =Affected by a pin-hole draft=]
In Plate 38 is shown a spore-print with a peculiar elongated tail. Such
was the specimen which I observed when lifting the pasteboard box which
had been placed above the mushroom to absolutely exclude the air. The
explanation was simple when I discerned that the tapering elongation
pointed directly to a tiny hole in the box barely larger than a
knitting-needle.
[Illustration: FUNGUS SPORES]
The greatest portion of the myriads of spores are wafted to the ends
of the earth, and form an important element in the so-called "dust" so
unwelcome to the tidy housewife. A sticky glass slide exposed to the
deposit of such dust, and placed beneath the microscope, will reveal
many fungus spores. The air is full of them.
A few of the various characteristic forms of these fungus-spores is
shown on a previous page, somewhat as a powerful microscope would
reveal them to us.
[Sidenote: =Whims of habitat=]
But it is only as they chance to alight individually in congenial
conditions for growth that they will consent to vegetate. Thus billions
of them are doomed to perish without progeny. These whims of habitat
among the fungi are almost past belief. Here, for instance, is a
tiny Puff-ball hardly larger than the period on this page. It bursts
at the summit, and sheds its puff of microscopic spores, so light
as to be without gravity, floating and settling everywhere upon the
earth, but only as they chance to alight upon the spines of a _dead
chestnut-burr_ of two years' decay will they find heart to grow. Such
is the fastidiousness of the little white mushroom, whose globular caps
dot the spines of the decaying chestnut-burrs in so many damp nooks in
the woods.
[Sidenote: =Curious fastidiousness=]
In closing my chapter a glance at the further eccentricities of choice
will not be inopportune. I append a few taken at random from the pages
of Berkeley, which lie open before me. In addition to the general broad
distinctions of habitat as "woods," "rotten wood," "old pastures,"
"dunghills," we find such fastidious selections as the following, each
by a distinct species with its own individual whim: "Dead fir-cones,
sawdust, beechnuts, plaster walls, old fermenting coffee-grounds,
wheat ears, cinders, dead oak leaves, old linen, wheat bread, hoofs,
feathers, decayed rope, fat, microscopic lenses, and damp carpets."
A complete list of these exclusive habitats of fungi would well fill a
large book, and might indeed almost involve the "index" of our botanies
and zoologies, to say nothing of organic substances generally.
[Sidenote: =House-fly fungus=]
Plants, both living and dead, are favorite habitats for various
species. The old stems of the common European nettle, according to
Cooke, becomes the host of about thirty distinct species of the
minute fungi. The toadstool itself is often the victim of other minor
species. Insects are a frequent prey. The wasp succumbs to its special
fungus parasite, which has formed a home within its body, and the
common house-fly is seen in the toils of its similar enemy, as it
hangs helpless by its proboscis upon the window-pane, enveloped in
the winding-sheet of white mould from the fungus which has done its
work within the insect's body. Spiders, locusts, ants, cicadæ, and
presumably all insects, are subject to similar fate from their especial
parasitic fungi. The fungus thus often comes to the rescue of afflicted
humanity in regulating the undue increase of insect pests. Here is
a pretty, slender, orange, pointed mushroom growing in the moss. We
pluck it from its bed, and it brings to the surface a chrysalis,
with the dead moth distinctly seen within the cavity from which its
roots spring. When we next come upon this species in the moss, we may
confidently predict the discovery of this same species of chrysalis.
[Sidenote: =Edible caterpillar fungi=]
A similar long, slender fungus springs from the head of a caterpillar
in New Zealand, and at length almost absorbs the insect's body. A
similar species upon another caterpillar is carefully collected and
desiccated by the Chinese, with whom it forms an important article in
their native pharmacopœia, and, moreover, it seems, may be perhaps
appropriately included among the "edibles," for are we not assured by
these expert and indiscriminate epicures of the chopsticks that this
species "makes an excellent dressing for roast duck."
[Illustration]
[Illustration: _Recipes_]