In Touch With Nature

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVI, Issue 96, 10 April 1926, Page 9

In Touch With Nature

(By

J. DRUMMOND,

F.L.S., F.Z.S.)

Nature notes will appear in the “Tribune” every Saturday. Mr. Drumond will be pleased to receive from our readers, notes relating to any remarkable incident or peculiarity they have noticed in bird, animal, or plant life, and he will also be pleased to answer questions. Letters should be addressed to him personally, care of Tribune Office, Hastings. ® THE GIANT PUFF-BALLS. A monstrous puff-ball, more than a fot in diameter found by children in a dry ditch near the post office at Whitianga ,at the head of Mercury Bay, is a member of the giant puffball group, the Lycoperdon. Photographs of the puff-ball, with a cup beside it to show its bulk, have been sent by Mr. J. H. Hudson, of Whitianga who states that in texture it resembles the larger sort of mushroom. and in weight it is comparable to a piece of pumice. The specimen is unusually large, but it is small compared with a member of. probably, the same species. Lycoperdon Bovista, found in America. This was five feet four inches at its greatest diameter and four feet six inches at its least diameter, and nine inches and a half high. In the puff-ball group of the fungi the bodyl of the plant usually is globular, as in the Whitianga specimen. The spores, when ripe, are a powdery mass intermingled with a web of threads. The spore-bearing surface occupies most of the interior of the plant. The spores at maturity, if the atmospheric conditions are suitable, emerge in puffs that often resemble smoke. Puff-balls find it necessary to produce prodigious numbers of spores, in the same wav as some species of fishes must produce prodigious numbers of eggs to ensure fertility. As myriads of puff-ball spores fail to produce plants, prodigality in the production of spores is essential. An actual estimate by an English fungologist—mycologist now—places the number of spores produced by a single large giant puffTial, perhaps about the same size as the Whitianga one, at 7,000,000,000.000. A single shaggy-cap fungus, it is estimated, produced 5.000.000.000 snores, and a dryad’s saddle produced 11,000,000,006.

Many species of fungi are cosmopolitans. This is accounted for. in part at least, bv the ease with which the invisible spores, so plentiful and so light, are carried bv insects and birds, and, particularly, on the wings of the wind. Some fungi are as clever as some flowering plants in using insects for the purpose of dispersal. The=e- fungi at tract insects bv producing sugary secretions, on which the insects feed. One species embeds its snores in a green, sticky mucous with a strong carrion smell. Insects eat the mucus until thev become almost comatose. They carry away many spones and disperse them. A very small puffha 1 !. using a catanult. hurls its snores ahou+ a yard into the air in order that thev may he dispersed bv the wind. A fungus parnsite that attracts flies and kills thorn off in rrv eat shontq opt its snores like bullets from a rifle, spores sometimes furm a vhi+ish h*»ln around a flv that has died on a win-

Puff-balls like some other fungi have some amazing peculiarities. One of these is their rapid growth. A writer on puff-balls some sixtyfive years ago stated that “the giant puff-ball increases from the size ot a pea to that of a melon in a single night.” Messrs. R. T. and E. W. Rolfe, authors of the best popular book on the fungi, state that puff-balls’ facility in thus direction is exaggerated, but that they shoot up surprisingly quickly. A puff-ball has a true growth ana an apparent growth, which consists of the rapid distension of tissue already formed, but previously unexpanded. A popular belief that mushrooms grow in a night has arisen from their apparent growth. Messrs. Rolfe, who have a more intimate acquaintance with the strange inhabitants of the fungus world than most humans are privileged to enjoy, explain that in most cases fungi must generate their spores when climatic conditions arc suitable. To prepare for this they have constructed organs that can be gorged with water and rapidly distended and erected at the proper time. In addition to this, the true growth of fungi is much more rapid than in the case of other plants. For one thing, fungi have a large number of growing points, while more highly developed plants have limited and localised growing layers. ® ® PRIMROSES ON RIVER BRIM. A primrose on the river’s brim may be inertly a yellow primrose and nothing more to some people, and a lovelv flower to others. It will have still greater attractions to those who read a book by Professor

Junius Henderson. Professor of Natural History at the University of Colorado. The primrose is on the river’s brim, he explains, because events followed each other in a long series, in orderly succession, under Nature’s unchanging, interacting, eternal laws. After Nature’s geological processes had prepared for the primrose by operating for ages on rock and soil and river, the primrose’s seed fell on the river’s brim, sprouted, and sent roots into the moist, nourishing ground. The primrose set up its leafy laboratory for sunlight to use in manufacturing chlorophyll, and it nodded in the breeze and spread its petals to ripen its fruit, as its ancestors had done for perhaps 1,000,000 generations before it, as its descendants may do for generations to come. $ LANDSCAPES HAVE HISTORIES This American professor’s book discusses erosion, the rise and decline of continents, the crumpling of the earth’s surface, waterfalls, rivers. lakes, mountains, glaciers, volcanoes, earthquakes, the place of plants and animals in landscapes, and “the most stupendous fact on the face of the earth, the ocean.** The theme is that every landscape has a history—a past, a present, and a future—which may be read in Nature’s own book. These particular pages of that great book have been translated interestingly by Professor Henderson. Everything is described graphically, mostly in generalisations. Erosion, for instance, is Nature’s gigantic chisel and plane. Every hill has been partly or wholly fashioned by that tool, every valley is partly its handiwork, every plain bears its impress. Nature’s transport system is running water. In comparison with it, ail the railway systems in the world combined dwindle into insignificance. Dust that floats in every summer breeze may mar the scenery to-day, but it rnav make the landscape of the future. Mountains, rivers, lakes, shores and other features all have life histories, periods of youth, of maturity, and of old age. It is delightful to be able to distinguish geological formations and to assign their ages, in the light even of the imperfect knowledge available. There#is greater delight in viewing geological and geographical features in relation to their environment and to the plants and animals that beautify them. From this point of view, a landscape has a vaster aspect. Professor Henderson shows in “Geology in its Relation to Landscape,” how this may be done. He might have dedicated his book to Nature and to things in the material world that are beautiful. It reflects the soul of a geologist. A copy has been sent by the publishers, the Stratford Company, Boston, Massachusetts.

@> PRACTICAL PLANT ECOLOGY The study of botany has changed remarkably during the past fifteen years. Fresh interest has been given to it by a school styled ecologists. Taking as their title the Greek word for house, abode, or dwelling, they concentrate attention on plants as they live in their natural homes. Ecologists familiarise themselves with plants’ household affaire. Ecology must be studied primarily in the field, as it considers a plant not only as an individual, but also as a member of a plant community, in relation to its environment and to its neighbours—how it acts upon them and how they act upon it. The method is like sociology as a study of mankind. The anatomist and the psysiologist study the structure and the working of the human body. To study what man does in the world, it is necessary to go out into the world to see how he lives and works amongst other men. To study plants—also the lower animals—in the same way, ecological methods must be followed. Tlie British Ecological Society hai been formed to foster this study, and its president, Mr. A. G. Tansley, to help beginners, has published “Practical Plant Ecology.” Students attracted to ecological work—they can rest assured that they will find its fascinating—can have no better guide than Mr. Tansley’s book. In addition to setting out th© principles and scope of ecology, it gives practical advice, even for making maps, keeping note?, and providing field equipment. Mr. Tansley is convinced that ecology has a high educational value. His book will give teachers a clear idea of the subject’s possibilities. His ideal school garden, by the way. is not a tidy one, devoted solely to well kept flowers and to vegetables, but an outdoor laboratory for the study of the conditions under which plants succeed or fail. Tt gives them a distinct human interest. His useful book has been published by Messrs. George Allen and Unwin, London.