IN THE WOODS
THE history of mushrooms reduced to a rule for cooking which will save
us from grave dangers was enough for Simon, Mathieu, Jean, and the
others, who lacked time to hear more; but Emile, Jules, and Claire were
not satisfied: they wished to extend their knowledge on these strange
vegetables. So their uncle took them one day to a beech wood near the
village.
The trees, several hundred years old and with their branches meeting at
a great height, formed an arch of foliage through which, here and there,
shone a ray of sunlight. Their smooth trunks, with white bark, gave the
effect of enormous columns sustaining the weight of an immense building
full of shade and silence. On the lofty summits crows cawed while
smoothing their feathers. Occasionally a redheaded green woodpecker,
surprised at its work, which consists of pecking the wormy wood with its
beak to make the insects come out that it feeds on, gave a cry of alarm
and flew off like a dart. In the midst of the moss with which the ground
was carpeted were here and there numbers of mushrooms. Some were round,
smooth, and white. Jules could not admire them enough; he likened them
in his imagination to eggs laid in a mossy hollow by some wandering hen.
Others were glossy red, others bright fawn-color, and still others
brilliant yellow. Some, just coming out of the ground, were enveloped in
a kind of bag that tears open as the mushroom grows; some, more
advanced, spread out like an open umbrella. Finally, there were many
that had already begun to decay. In their fetid rottenness swarmed
innumerable grubs, which later would become insects. After picking a
number of the principal kinds, the party sat down at the foot of a
beech, on the soft moss-carpet, and Uncle Paul spoke thus:
“A mushroom is the blossom of a plant that lives under ground and is
called by learned men _mycelium_. This subterranean plant is composed of
white, slender, fragile threads, resembling in their entirety a large
cobweb. If you pull up a mushroom carefully you will see at the base of
its stalk, in the earth that clings to it, numerous white threads of the
mycelium. Let us imagine a rosebush planted so as to leave nothing but
the roses above ground. The buried bush will represent the subterranean
mycelium; the roses, open to the air, will represent the blossoms of the
mycelium, that is to say the mushrooms.”
“A rosebush,” objected Jules, “has stout branches covered with leaves;
the mushroom-plant, according to what I see, has nothing of the sort. It
is a kind of moldiness that branches out in the ground in white veins.”
“Those white veins, so delicate that one can hardly touch them without
breaking them, form the subterranean plant, without leaves or roots.
They lengthen little by little in the ground to a pretty good distance
from the point of departure. Then, at a favorable moment, they produce
little swellings which grow under ground, become mushrooms, and burst
open their bed of earth to expand in the air. This structure explains to
us why mushrooms grow in groups. Each group, with the mycelium that
produces it, constitutes one and the same plant.”
“I have seen groups of mushrooms in a perfect circle,” Claire remarked.
“If the ground is of uniform character and nowhere hinders the
propagation of the subterranean vegetable in one direction rather than
in another, the mycelium spreads equally on all sides, and so produces
circular groups of mushrooms, which the country people sometimes call
witches’ circles.”
“Why witches’ circles?” asked Jules.
“The ignorant and superstitious think they see an effect of witchcraft
in this curious circular arrangement, whereas it is but the natural
result of the uniformly equal development of the subterranean plant.”
“Then there are no witches?” said Emile.
“No, my dear. There are rogues who abuse the credulity of others; there
are simpletons disposed to listen to them; but no one has preternatural
powers.”
“Since a mushroom is the blossom of a subterranean plant, of the
mycelium, as you call it, must it not have stamens, pistils, ovaries?”
Jules inquired.
“A mushroom is in its way the blossom of a kind of vegetable, but its
structure has nothing in common with that of ordinary flowers. It is a
structure of a special sort, very complicated, very curious, which I
shall pass by in silence so as not to overcharge your memory.
“The chief function of a flower, you know, is to produce seeds. Well,
the mushroom too produces seeds, but so small, so different from others,
that they have a special name,—spores. Spores are the seed of the
mushroom, just as acorns are the seed of the oak. That is worthy of some
further explanation.
[Illustration: Mushrooms]
“The mushrooms most familiar to us are composed of a sort of dome
supported by a stalk. This dome is called the cap. The under side of the
cap takes various shapes, of which the principal are these: Sometimes it
is composed of gills which radiate from the center to the border;
sometimes it is pierced by an infinity of little holes, which are the
orifices of as many tubes joined together in a common mass; sometimes it
is covered with fine points like those of a cat’s tongue.
“Mushrooms that have the under side of the cap formed of radiating gills
are called agarics; those pierced with little holes, boleti; those
covered with little points, hydnei. Agarics and boleti are the most
common.”
Here Uncle Paul took, one by one, the mushrooms they had gathered and
showed his nephews the gills of the agarics, the holes of the boleti,
and the points of the hydnei.
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