IN TOUCH WITH NATURE

Otago Witness, Issue 3773, 6 July 1926, Page 6

IN TOUCH WITH NATURE

LIGHTS IN TTTE FTTNGUS WORLD. Bt .. DRUMMOND. V L.S., PZ S. Passing at night by the stump of a loquat tree that bad been cut down, Mr K. M. Hepburn, of Batley, Kaipara Harbour, was surprised to find that it was glowing. Tiie trees had died, and the stump was pulpy. The woou seemed to be saturated with phosphorescence. Mr Hepburn took some of the luminous chips inside. The following night they did not glow, but chips on the ground outside were glowing still. Mr Hepburn asks for an C.Kthnation of thia phenomenon. The explanation is that the loquat tree had been attacked by a luminous fungus. This luminosity, seconding to as high an authority as Fabre, the French naturalist who has charmed the world, expresses the respiration of a fungus's cells. The fungus lights up, in his poetical view, to celebrate its nuptials and the emission of its spores. The luminosity is slow combustion, a sort of more active respiration, than usual. The luminous emission is extinguished in the unbreathable gases, nitrogen %nd carbonic acid; it continues in aerated water, it ceases in water deprived of its air by boiling. A magnificent jujube-red mushroom in Europe is described jpy Fabre as a wonderful sight when luminous, shedding a soft white gleam similar to the gleam of a glowworm, and looking like a piece of the full lftoon. The luminosity ceases when a fungus dies. As it occurs -nly in the dark, it is like the morning star the midst of a cloud. . Taking as a parallel in the animal kingdom the glow-worm’s gleam, It is believed that a fungus’s luminosity, sometimes at least, is a device to attract insects that will disseminate the spores. In that case, it is designed to attract inscsts that fly at night, in the same way as bright colours of flowers are regarded as a lure to inserts that fly by day. Nocturnal insects are attracted, almost irresistibly sometimes, apparently, to any luminous object, and this theory of the cause of luminosity in fungi is supported by the fact that many species of flies and beetles select luminous fungi as suitable places in which to lay their eggs. This utilitarian reasoning, allied to the animal and the plant kingdom, however, should be accepted with caution. Dr H. 0. Forbes, who, 33 years ago, was director of Canterbury Museum, Christchurch, described vividly a funguslighted forest in Sumatra: “The stem of every tree blinked with a pale greenishwhitelight that undulated across the surface of the ground like moonlight coming and going behind the clouds. It came from a minute thread-like fungus invisible in the daytime to the unassisted eye; and here and there thick, dumpy mushrooms displayed a sharp, clear dome of light* whose intensity never varied or changed till break of day. Long phosphorescent caterpillars and centipedes crawled out of every comer, leaving a trail of light behind them, while fireflies darted about above like a lower firmament/' Some 50 years ago an English futurologist—mycologist in these days—noted an incident not unlike the one Mr Hepburn refers to. A quantity of larch or spruce had been dragged up a very steep hill. In

the evening a party of young people, going up the hill, were astonished to find the path strewn with luminous pieces of wood and bark. Following the bright trail, they came to a strong blaze of white light coming from one of the logs, which seemed to be ablaze. The light was more intense where the fungus’s spores had penetrated deeper than in other places. If an effort was made there to rub off the luminous material, the glow was brighter. When these tests were made the fungus had been luminous for three nights. In England, some 60 years ago, boys took pieces of touchwood home in their pockets to be taken to bed with them in order that their light could be admired there. The touchwood, the white decaying wood of an old stump, w as covered with the spawn of a fungus. People in some northern countries in former years —they may do so still—literally blazed trails through woods at night by bark on which a luminous fungus had grown. The luminosity was known as fox-fire in America, apparently, as Huckleberry Finn refers to “them rotten chunks that’s called fox-fire, and just make a soft glow when you lay them in a dark place/' It is reported that, in the recent-waT, some British soldiers on the western front strapped luminous wood to their steel helmets and to the foresights of their rifles. At the other extreme of human devices; women in some tropical islands use luminous fungi as hair ornaments. - - - -

A correspondent, a few weeks ago, inquired as Co ants' that cultivate fungi for food. This is done by* ants and termites in Ceylon, Madagascar, Brazil, and other countries. In chambers set apart for the purpose, the insects place fragments of leaves, masticated and pounded into spongy masses. These produce fungus spawn, from which filaments spring. The filaments are cut or cropped and eaten by the insects. The cultivations are attended to systematically and methodically. Undesirable foreign plants are weeded out, and the fungi are pruned in order to keep them in bearing, and to prevent them from growing too much. If the insect gardeners are removed. the fungi send up structures which usually burst through the top of the nest. It is stated that each species of ant cultivates only one snecies of fungus, and that that fungus is the only one which grows in the nests of that species of ant.

Naturalists, people who are interested iq natural history, but have few opportunities to study it, and the general public, will find much to attract them in ‘Discovery/ monthly magazine published- in Lon don by Messrs Benn Brothers. It is popular journal of knowledge, with a scope as wide as the universe itself, written by able experts in simple, sometimes graphic, language. The May issue is a criterion of the standard it has set up. For the coming spring in New Zealand, observers of native and introduced birds will find useful sugSections in an illustrated account by Dr . J. Patten, Professor of Anatomy in Sheffield University of his researches into the breeding factors in birds. He shows that most of the springtime habits of birds are part of an elaborate practice of courtship and breeding. Song, pugnacity, and displays of plumage are only a few of those factors. Dr Patten does not deal only with English birds. In this article he includes several Australians. He draws attention to the male house-sparrow’s “pleasing subtlety, sedulous display of plumage, vanity of deportment, love-antics, and dances," and states that the sparrow’s other charms earn for him, as he plights his troth, the name of a gallant little gentleman who, after clash of arms with his rival suitor, shows wood-will. Robin Rsd. breast, like New Zealand’s wood-robin, to which, by the way, it is not related, ii a

notorious fighter, sparring with its fellows on the slightest pretext. In Dr Patten s avaries females are influenced not only by beauty of melody, but also by vigour and passion, and, in a measure, by elegance of deportment. In an article on the tastes and habits of individual bees, distinguished from community characters, Mr C. Brughes describes sentry-go duty at the hive. The themes of other articles range from life amongst wild tribes in Assam to Roman remains in England, and a riddle of the stars. The fact that Sir J. J. Thomson, Bir F. G. Kenyon, Professor A. C. Seward, and Professor R. S. Conway are trustees for Discovery is a guarantee of its quality.

As Mr J. Beadle, Bedford street, St. Clair, Dunedin, states, most flowers and plants have a pleasant perfume. Some have a very unpleasant smell, and he asks if this is a warning indicating that the plants are poisonous. It certainly is not. The perfume or the smell is no indication one way or the other, of a plant's qualities. It is not likely that it would be, as a plant, presumably, cives forth an odour for its own use or pleasure, and it is immaterial to it whether it is poisonous to people and lower animals or.not- Many flowers that have a foetid smell are not poisonous. Some of the most poisonous flowers have littje or no odour of any kind. The most deadly of all the deadly fungi. Amanita phalloides, neither smells nor tastes unpleasantly. Fragrant flowers attract mainly bees and butterflies and moths; foetid flowers attract mainly carrion flies and gome species of beetles; but this is another aspect of the* question. A small orchid, Earina suaveolens, is one of the sweetest smelling flowers amonvst New Zealand’s native plants. The New Zealand plant with the unpleasantest smell—with the qn pleasantest of all possible smells, perhaps—, is a slender, graceful shrub, Coprosma foetidissima, usually from 6ft to 10ft high, but sometimes a tree 20ft high. The smell disgustingly foetid, and horriblv disagreeable, comes from the leaves when they are bruised or are being dried. Mr Maeterlinck confessed that he could not understand in what way perfumes are useful to flowers, and more than he could explain why human beings perceive per fumes. The sense of smell, he admits, exercises important servile functions. It is the keeper of the air people breathe, the hygienist or chemist that watches carefully over the quality of the food offered for human consumption. It detects enemies and reveals the presence of suspicious or dangerous germs; but, in addition to this practical mission, it has another one, which corresponds to nothing at aIL He believes that the sense of smell is the last-born of the human senses, and that perfumes •re utterly useless to the needs of people’s physical' lives. As to flowers, their perfumes. he states, are their souls.