attracted by the moister part of grassy plains, are the actual cause
of fairy rings. Archæologists suggested that they might be the
remains of circles formed by the ancient inhabitants of Britain, in
the celebration of their sports, or the worship of their deities.
Naturalists formerly came to the conclusion that the rings were
caused by the underground workings of insects, and a few years ago a
writer in the _Transactions of the Woolhope Club_ attempted to prove
that they were the work of moles. These so-called fairy rings, which
have long puzzled philosophers, are caused by a peculiar mode of
the growth of certain species of fungi, the peculiarity being their
tendency to assume a circular form. A patch of spawn arising from a
single seed, or a collection of seeds, spreads centrifugally in every
direction and forms a common felt from which the fruit rises at its
extreme edge; the soil in the inner part of the disk is exhausted,
and the spawn dies or becomes effete there while it spreads all
round in an outward direction and produces another crop, whose spawn
spreads again. The circle is thus continually enlarged and extends
indefinitely until some cause intervenes to destroy it. This mode of
growth is far more common than is supposed, and may be constantly
seen in our woods, when the spawn can be spread only in the soil or
among the leaves and decaying fragments which cover it. In the fields
this tendency is illustrated by the formation of circles or parts of
circles of vigorous dark green grass. To get at the cause, however,
of the rank growth of the grass composing these rings is not without
its difficulties still. It is known that fungi exhaust the soil of
plant-food and store it up in their own substance. In the case of
these fairy rings they take up from the soil the organic nitrogen
which is not available to the grasses, and in some way become the
medium of the supply of the soil-nitrogen to the grasses forming
the circle. How exactly the nitrogen, one of the most important
plant-foods, is fixed by these fungi has not yet been discovered, but
the grasses immediately following the fungi have been analyzed and
found to contain a larger proportion of nitrogen than the herbage in
the neighborhood.
Fairy rings are sometimes distinctly seen visible on a hillside from
a considerable distance, many of them being years old and of enormous
dimensions. One recorded from Stebbing, in Essex, measured 120 feet
across, the grass all over it being very coarse and dark green in
color, chiefly of the cock’s-foot species. Rings found in pasture
lands are composed of several species of fungi, all of which are
edible. They are most frequently observed to be formed by marasmius
oreades, a little buff mushroom which most people know under the name
of champignons, or Scotch bonnets. It is abundant everywhere. For
several months in the year it comes up in successive crops in great
profusion after rain, and continually traces fairy rings among the
grass.
Another and very delicious mushroom, agaricus prunulus, sometimes
called the plum agaric, and known in America as the French mushroom,
occasionally succeeds a crop of the champignons which had recently
occupied the same site. It is sometimes found throughout the
summer, but autumn is the time to look for it. The only other good
edible fungi to be found in any quantity forming rings are the
horse-mushroom, the giant-mushroom, and St. George’s mushroom. The
first two are excellent eating, and to be had in the late summer
and autumn; but the last are reproduced in rings in spring every
year--the circle continuing to increase till it breaks up into
irregular lines. The continuity of the circle is a sign to the
collector that there will be a plentiful harvest next spring, while
the breaking up is conclusive proof that it is going to disappear
from that place. Spring is the only time it makes its appearance,
and the proper place to look for it is the borders of woodlands.
It is one of the most savory of mushrooms, and difficult to be
confounded with any other, as it appears at a time when scarcely any
other kinds occur. Like the champignon, it has an advantage over the
common mushroom in the readiness with which it dries, and is largely
employed in the preparation of ketchup. It is called St. George’s
mushroom on account of its appearing about St. George’s Day, the 23d
of April, and among the peasants of Austria is looked on as a special
gift from that saint. In Italy a basket of early specimens is a
favorite present among all classes.
LICHENS
--HUGH MACMILLAN
Lichens are exceedingly diversified in their form, appearance, and
texture. About five hundred different kinds have been found in
Great Britain alone, while upward of three thousand species have
been discovered in different parts of the world by the zealous
researches of naturalists. In their very simplest rudimentary
forms, they consist apparently of nothing more than a collection
of powdery granules, so minute that the figure of each is scarcely
distinguishable, and so dry and utterly destitute of organization
that it is difficult to believe that any vitality exists in them.
Some of these form ink-like stains on the smooth tops of posts
and felled trees; others are sprinkled like flower of brimstone or
whiting over shady rocks and withered tufts of moss; while a third
species is familiar to every one, as covering with a bright green
incrustation the trunks and boughs of trees in the squares and
suburbs of smoky towns, where the air is so impure as to forbid the
growth of all other vegetation. It also creeps over the grotesque
figures and elaborate carving on the roofs and pillars of Roslin
Chapel, near Edinburgh, and gives to the whole an exquisitely
beautiful and romantic appearance. One species, the Lepraria
Jolithus, is associated with many a superstitious legend. Linnæus,
in his journal of a tour through Œland and East Gothland, thus
alludes to it: “Everywhere near the road I saw stones covered with a
blood-red pigment, which on being rubbed turned into a light yellow,
and diffused a smell of violets, whence they have obtained the name
of violet stones; though, indeed, the stone itself has no smell at
all, but only the moss with which it is dyed.” At Holywell, in North
Wales, the stones are covered with this curious lichen, which gives
them the appearance of being stained with blood; and, of course, the
peasantry allege that it is the ineffaceable blood which dropped from
Ste. Winifred’s head, when she suffered martyrdom on that sacred
spot. A higher order of lichens (Bæomyces) is furnished besides this
powdery crust, with solid, fleshy, club-shaped fructification like a
minute pink fungus; while a singularly beautiful genus (Calicium),
usually of a very vivid yellow color, spreading in indefinite
patches over oaks and firs, is provided with capsules somewhat like
those of the mosses.
Most of the crustaceous lichens are merely gray filmy patches
inseparable from their growing places, indefinitely spreading, or
bounded by a narrow dark border, which always intervenes to separate
them when two species closely approximate, and studded all over with
black, brown, or red tubercles. The foliaceous species are usually
round rosettes of various colors, attached by dense black fibres
all over their under-surface, or by a single knot-like root in the
centre. Some are dry and membranaceous; while others are gelatinous
and pulpy, like aerial sea-weeds left exposed on island rocks by the
retiring waves of an extinct ocean. Some are lobed with woolly veins
underneath; and others reticulated above, and furnished with little
cavities or holes on the under-surface. The higher orders of lichens,
though destitute of anything resembling vascular tissue, exhibit
considerable complexity of structure. Some are scrubby and tufted,
with stem and branches like miniature trees; others bear a strong
resemblance to the corallines of our seashores; while a third class,
“the green-fringed cup-moss with the scarlet tip,” as Crabble calls
it, is exceedingly graceful, growing in clusters beside the black
peat moss or underneath the heather tuft,
“And, Hebe-like, upholding
Its cups with dewy offering to the sun.”
As an illustration of the extraordinary appearance which lichens
occasionally present, I may describe the Opegrapha, or written
lichen, perhaps the most curious and remarkable member of this
strange tribe. In her cacti and orchids sportive Nature often
displays a ludicrous resemblance to insects, birds, animals, and
even the “human face and form divine”; but this is one of the few
instances in which she has condescended to imitate in her vegetable
productions the written language of man. A cryptogam is in this case
a cryptogram! The crust of the curious autograph of nature is a
mere white tartareous film of indefinite extent, sometimes bounded
by a faint line of black, like a mourning letter. It spreads over
the bark of trees, particularly the beech, the hazel, and the ash.
On the birch-tree--whose smooth, snow-white vellum-like bark seems
designed by nature for the inscription of lovers’ names and magic
incantations--it may often be seen covering the whole trunk. The
fructification consists of long wavy black lines, sometimes parallel
like Runic inscriptions; sometimes arrow-headed, like the cuneiform
characters engraved upon the monumental stones of Persepolis and
Assyria; and sometimes gathered together in groups and clusters,
bearing a strong resemblance to Hebrew, Arabic, or Chinese letters.
Lichens are extremely simple in their construction. They are composed
of two parts, the nutritive and the reproductive system. The
nutritive portion is called the thallus, which, in the typical plant,
spreads equally on all sides from the original point of development,
in the from of an increasing circle; the circumference of which is
often healthy, while the central parts are decayed or completely
wanting.
Nature has bestowed upon the lichens a peculiar mode of reproduction
which appears quite different from that of the higher orders of the
vegetable kingdom; and yet they are propagated with as unerring
certainty and as great rapidity as the most prolific family of
flowers. Every one who has an attentive eye must have often noticed
the curious round disks or shields, usually of a different color from
the rest of the plant, with which their surface is often studded.
These are called apothecia, and correspond with the flowers of the
higher plants; for in them are lodged the seeds or germs by which the
lichens are perpetuated. When examined under the microscope they are
found to consist of a number of delicate flask-shaped cells, called
thecæ, containing 4, 8, 12, or 16 sporidia, that is, cells of an oval
form, with spores or seeds in their interior. The mode in which these
spores are ejected affords as wonderful a proof of design as in the
case of ferns and mosses.
[Illustration: Typical Nuts and Tree-Products
1, Cinnamon; 2, Camphire (Camphor); 3, Pomegranate; 4, Sycamore Figs;
5, Olive Twig and Fruit; 6, Theobroma Cacao (Chocolate)]
Lichens are very slow-growing plants. They spring up somewhat rapidly
during the first year or two, as is evinced by the luxurious growth
which they form over young fruit-trees and espaliers in gardens; but
after a circular frond is formed, they subside into a dormant state,
in which they remain unaltered for many years. The foliaceous and
scrubby species are the most fugacious, though even these have great
powers of longevity. We have no data from which to ascertain the age
of tartareous species, which adhere almost inseparably to stones.
Some of them are probably as old as any living organisms that exist
on the earth.
In the Arctic regions--those outer boundaries of the earth where
eternal winter presides--these humble plants constitute by far the
largest proportion of the flora, and by their prodigious development,
and their wide social distribution, give as marked and peculiar a
character to the scenery as the palms and tree-ferns impart to the
landscapes of the tropics. In the Southern Hemisphere also lichens
extend almost to the pole. They mark the extreme limit at which land
vegetation has been found; one scrubby species, with large, deep,
chestnut-colored fructification, called Usnea fasciata, having been
observed by Lieutenant Kendal on Deception Island, the Ultima Thule
of the Antarctic regions.
In tropical countries, where there is not too much moisture and
shade, the trees are shaggy with lichens; and some of the most
magnificent species, both as regards size and color, have been
gathered in the Cinchona forests which clothe the lower slopes of the
Andes, and in the warmer and more densely wooded parts of Australia
and New Zealand. The thick impervious forests of Brazil, however,
are said to be almost destitute of them. On the Alps of Switzerland
the last lichens are to be found on the highest summits, attached
to projecting rocks, exposed to the scorching heats of summer and
the fierce blasts of winter; and from forty to forty-five kinds
have been found in spots, surrounded by extensive masses of snow,
between 10,000 and 14,780 feet above the level of the sea. It is
interesting to know that the only plant found by Agassiz near the top
of Mont Blanc was the Lecidea geographica, a very beautiful lichen,
which covers the exposed rocks on the sides and summits of all the
British hills, with its bright-green, map-like patches. This species
was also gathered by Dr. Hooker at an elevation of 19,000 feet on
the Himalayas, and occupied the last outpost of vegetation which
gladdened the eyes of the illustrious Humboldt, when standing within
a few hundred feet of the summit of Chimborazo, the highest peak of
the Andes.
The Lecidea geographica affords, I may mention, the most remarkable
example of the almost universal diffusion of lichens, being the most
Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine lichen in the world--facing the savage
cliffs of Melville Island in the extreme north, clinging to the
volcanic rocks of Deception Island in the extreme south, and scaling
the towering peak of Kinchin-junga, the most elevated spot on the
surface of the earth.
It is somewhat remarkable that Alpine lichens generally are more or
less of a brown or black color. This peculiarity seems to be owing
to the presence of usnine or usnic acid, which in a pure state is
of a green color, as in the lichens which grow in shady forests,
but which becomes oxidized, and changes to every shade of brown and
black, when exposed to the powerful agencies of light and heat on
the bleak barren rocks on the mountain side and summit. These gloomy
lichens, associated as they always are with the dusky tufts of
that singular genus of mosses, the Andræas, give a very marked and
peculiar character to many of the Highland mountains, especially to
the summit of Ben Nevis, where they creep, in the utmost profusion,
over the fragments of abraded rocks which strew the ground on every
side, otherwise bare and leafless, as was the world on the first
morning of creation, and reminding one of the ruin of some stupendous
castle, or the battlefield of the Titans. Some of the Alpine lichens,
however, are remarkable for the vividness and brilliancy of their
colors. The mountain cup-moss, with its light green stalk clothed
and filigreed with scales and emerald cup studded round with rich
scarlet knobs, presents no unapt resemblance to a double red daisy.
It grows in large clusters on the bare storm-scalped ridges, and
forms a kind of miniature flower-garden in the Alpine wilderness.
The loveliest, however, of all the mountain lichens is the Solorina
crocea, which spreads over the loose mould in the clefts of rocks,
and on the fragments of comminuted schist on the summits of the
highest Highland mountains, forming patches of the most beautiful
and vivid green, varied, when the under side of the lobes is curled
up, by reticulations of a very rich orange-saffron color. This
species is not found at a lower elevation than 4,000 feet; hence it
is unknown in England, Ireland, and Wales, whose highest mountains
fall considerably short of this altitude. I have gathered it on
Cairngorm, Ben Macdhui, and Ben Lawers. In this last locality, which
is well known to botanists as exhibiting a perfect garden of rare and
beautiful Alpine plants, it grows in greater abundance, I believe,
than in any other spot in the Highlands.
On account of the large quantity of starchy matter which they
contain, they often considerably, and sometimes even entirely, form
the diet of man and animals in those dreary inhospitable regions
where the wintry rigor, or the scorching heat of the climate, forbids
all other kinds of vegetation to grow. Every one is familiar with the
fact that the reindeer-moss (Cladonia rangiferina) forms altogether
the food of that animal during the prolonged northern winters. This
lichen grows sparingly in little tufts among the heather in Scotland,
and sometimes whitens the sides and plateaus of the Highland hills,
covering bare and verdureless places where the snow first falls in
winter and lingers longest in summer; but it is in the vast sandy
plains, called by the Laplanders Flechten-tundra and Moos-tundra, as
lichens or mosses predominate, which border the Arctic Ocean, that
it flourishes in the greatest profusion and luxuriance. There it
completely covers the ground with its snowy tufts, and occupies as
conspicuous a place in the economy of nature as the grass in warmer
regions. Linnæus says that no plant flourishes so luxuriantly as
this in the pine-forests of Lapland, the surface of the soil being
completely carpeted with it for many miles in extent; and that if by
an accident the forests are burned to the ground, in a very short
time the lichens reappear, and resume all their original vigor.
When the ground is covered with hard and frozen snow, so that the
reindeer can not obtain its usual food, it finds a substitute in a
very curious lichen called rock-hair (Alectoria jubata), which covers
with its beard-like tufts the trunk of almost every tree. In most
severe weather the Laplanders cut down whole forests of the largest
trees, that their herds may be enabled to browse at liberty upon the
tufts which cover the higher branches. The vast, dreary pine-forests
of Lapland possess a character which is peculiarly their own, and
are perhaps more singular in the eyes of the traveler than any other
feature in the landscapes of that remote and desolate region. This
character they owe to the immense number of lichens with which they
abound. The ground instead of grass is carpeted with dense tufts of
the reindeer moss, white as a shower of new-fallen snow; while the
trunks and branches of the trees are swollen far beyond their natural
dimensions with huge, dusky, funereal bunches of the rock-hair
hanging down in masses, exhaling a damp earthy smell, like an old
cellar, or stretching from tree to tree in long festoons, waving with
every breath of wind, and creating a perpetual melancholy twilight.
Another beard-like lichen (Usnea florida), often growing along with
the rock-hair, is gathered in great quantities in North America,
from the pine-forests, and stored up as winter fodder for cattle in
inclement seasons. Goats, and especially deer, are fond of it; and
in winter when other food is scarce, they hardly leave a vestige
of it on the trees within their reach. The tortoises of the small
rocky islands of the Galapagos Archipelago subsist almost entirely
upon it. In Scotland it is one of the most picturesque ornaments of
the pine-forests. When fully developed it forms tufts nearly a foot
in length. It is quite a miniature larch-tree, with root, stem, and
most intricate branches and twigs. Its color is pale sea-green;
and a central white thread or pith runs through the main stem, and
lateral branches, on which, when cracked with age, the segments
of cellular tissue are strung like beads on a necklace. A kind of
farinaceous meal is plentifully sprinkled on the ultimate branches.
Altogether it is one of the most beautiful and interesting lichens. A
reddish variety grows in such quantities on trees of Conyza arborea,
forming the alley near Napoleon Bonaparte’s residence in St. Helena,
that this hanging vegetation is the first thing that attracts the eye
of the visitor.
But it is not to animals alone that lichens furnish a supply of
food. There are few, I presume, who are not acquainted with some
particulars regarding the history and uses of that remarkable lichen
sold in chemists’ shops under the name of Cetraria islandica, or
Iceland moss. What barley, rye, and oats are to the Indo-Caucasian
races of Asia and western Europe; the olive, the grape, and the fig
to the inhabitants of the Mediterranean districts; the date-palm to
the Egyptian and Arabian; rice to the Hindu; and the tea-plant to
the Chinese--the Iceland moss is to the Laplanders, Icelanders, and
Esquimaux.
It may be mentioned that, notwithstanding its name, the Iceland moss
is not only more plentiful, but more largely developed in all its
varied forms in Norway than in Iceland, and it is in Norway that it
is now almost exclusively collected for the European market.
Those who have read the affecting account which Franklin and
Richardson give of their expedition to Arctic America must be
familiar with the name of the Tripe de Roche, which occurs on almost
every page, and is intimately associated with the fearful sufferings
which these brave men endured, a part of which only would have
sufficed to unseat the reason of most individuals. During their long
and terrible journey from the Coppermine River to Fort Enterprise,
one of the stations of the Hudson’s Bay Company, in the almost total
absence of every other kind of salutary food, their lives were
supported by a bitter and nauseous lichen, to which the name of Tripe
de Roche (Gyrophora) has been given as if in mockery.
The Tripe de Roche consists of various species of Gyrophora--black,
leather-like lichens, studded with small black points like coiled
wire buttons, and attached by an umbilical root, or by short strong
fibres to rocks on the mountains. Some of them bear no unapt
resemblance to a piece of shagreen; while others appear corroded,
like a fragment of burned skin, as if the rock on which they grew
had been subjected to the action of fire. They are found in cold
exposed situations on Alpine rocks of granite or micaceous schist,
in almost all parts of the world--on the Himalayas and Andes as well
as the British mountains. But it is in the Arctic regions alone that
they luxuriate, covering the surface of every rock, to the level of
the seashore, with a gloomy Plutonian vegetation that seems like the
charred cinders and shriveled remains of former verdure and beauty.
MOSSES
--HUGH MACMILLAN
Mosses belong to the foliaceous or highest division of flowerless
plants. Although consisting entirely of cellular tissue and
increasing by simple additions of matter to the growing point or
apex of parts already formed, they point to far higher orders
of vegetation; they are prefigurations of the flowering plants,
epitomes of archetypes in trees and flowers. There is nothing in the
appearance or structure of the lichens, fungi, or algæ to remind
the popular mind of higher plants; they form, as it were, a strange
microcosm of their own--a perfectly distinct and peculiar order of
vegetable existence. But when we ascend a step higher and come to
the mosses, we find for the first time the rudimental characters
and distinctions of root, stem, branches, and leaves--we recognize
an ideal exemplar of the flowering plants, all whose parts and
organs are, as it were, sketched out, in anticipation, in these
simple and tiny organisms. Through the small, densely cushioned,
moss-like Alpine flowers, they approximate analogically to the
phanerogamous plants in their leaves and habits of growth; and
through the cone-like spikes of the club-mosses they approximate to
the pine tribe in their fructification. From both these classes of
highly organized plants, however, they are separated by wide and
numerous intervening links. But still it is curious and interesting
to find in them an exemplification of the universal teleology of
nature--the humblest typical forms pointing to the grand archetypes,
the simplest structures anticipating and prefiguring the most highly
organized and complicated.
In no tribe of plants is there so great a similarity between the
different species as in the mosses. This remarkable similarity,
concealing a no less remarkable diversity, has led to the popular
belief that there is only one kind of moss. Closely examined,
however, by an educated eye, their exceeding variableness of form
will at once become evident, some being slender, hair-like plants;
some resembling miniature fir-trees, others cedars, and others
crested feathers and ostrich-plumes. In size they vary from a minute
film of green scarcely visible to the naked eye to wreaths and
clusters several feet in length. Nor are their colors less variable,
ranging from white through every shade of yellow, red, green, and
brown, to the deepest and most sombre black.
The leaves of mosses are their most prominent parts. To the careless
and superficial eye, accustomed to look at a tuft of moss as merely
a patch of velvety greenness, creeping over an old tree or dike, the
leaves of all mosses may appear precisely similar; but the attentive
observer who examines them under a microscope will find that the
leaves of different kinds of trees are not more distinct from each
other than are those of the mosses.