THE FUNGI SEASON

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 139, 8 March 1941, Page 13

THE FUNGI SEASON

Some Useful Purpose

With’the arrival of autumn, fungi, such as mushrooms and toadstools, are much in evidence. There is no satisfactory definition for fungi, hut they may be regarded as lowly plants, able to exist without light, and. which, like the parasitic dodder, are devoid of the green, sugar-making chlorophyll. The various kinds of moulds and toadstools which do not victimize living plants have therefore to find sugar in a ready-made form, and this is available in the dead vegetable matter scat; tered about pastures and trees. Fungi prove their value by reducing this material to a more useful form and this decomposition is known as sapprophytism.

The majority of such' fungi are helpful to man, though slight damage may be done on occasions by the blue-greep penicillium species which attacks damaged citrus fruits and the grey mucor on bread.

Fungi produce themselves by thin threads known as mycelium (of which sports are a form), and may be seen in dry compost heaps and sometimes beneath plants. Yeasts, however, do not have true mycelium, though it is thought that their ancestors did.