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    Victorian Toadstools and Mushrooms: A Key and Descriptive Notes to 120 Different Gilled Fungi (Family Agaricaceae) , with Remarks on Several Other Families of the Higher Fungi
    Victorian Toadstools and Mushrooms: A Key and Descriptive Notes to 120 Different Gilled Fungi (Family Agaricaceae) , with Remarks on Several Other Families of the Higher Fungi
    Victorian Toadstools and Mushrooms: A Key and Descriptive Notes to 120 Different Gilled Fungi (Family Agaricaceae) , with Remarks on Several Other Families of the Higher Fungi
    Ebook132 pages1 hour

    Victorian Toadstools and Mushrooms: A Key and Descriptive Notes to 120 Different Gilled Fungi (Family Agaricaceae) , with Remarks on Several Other Families of the Higher Fungi

    By James H. Willis

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    About this ebook

    This comprehensive handbook to identifying toadstools and mushrooms will delight the natural historian and nature lover. Its 90 pages are extensively illustrated with photographs, drawings and diagrams forming a complete how-to guide. With meticulous descriptive notes and a chapter on Vegetable Caterpillars and other Large Asomycetes. This book contains classic material dating back to the 1900s and before. The content has been carefully selected for its interest and relevance to a modern audience.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRead Books Ltd.
    Release dateApr 10, 2014
    ISBN9781473392564
    Victorian Toadstools and Mushrooms: A Key and Descriptive Notes to 120 Different Gilled Fungi (Family Agaricaceae) , with Remarks on Several Other Families of the Higher Fungi

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      Book preview

      Victorian Toadstools and Mushrooms - James H. Willis

      Introduction

      The ignorance of the average person concerning such common objects as fungi is truly remarkable; indeed, to most people only two kinds of fungi are known—the popular mushroom and the unpopular toadstool, albeit these terms mean precisely the same thing! This is rather surprising, when it is considered that many fungi are amongst the most colourful and elegant things that grow, besides often deserving a place in our table menu.

      Toadstools of every kind have been stigmatized by tradition, regarded as sinister freaks of nature, shunned, and deemed unworthy of investigation—even the scholarly Linnaeus paid very little heed to them; they usually appear in wet, sodden situations during inclement weather and often decay rapidly. Such facts, and the undoubted toxicity of some kinds, probably account for the neglect which this fascinating assemblage of plants has suffered, but nowadays it has become imperative to carry out fungal research, if for no other end than to combat the ravages in our growing crops, foodstuffs, and building material caused by destructive micro-fungi. In my erstwhile capacity of field officer to the Forests Commission, I have perhaps had better opportunities for studying our larger fungi as they grow than have most nature-lovers, though anyone may find scores of interesting species near at hand, if he will but take the trouble to look. My own humble explorations in the fungus world have been amply repaid, and no more alluring field for research is open to the naturalist wishing to specialize. The present articles are put forward with the hope that others may become interested in mycology and thus help to dispel the erroneous views so widely held of fungi in general.

      Within the scope of this publication, it is impossible even to mention a substantial number of our fungus groups, and so I have focused attention principally upon the showy and ubiquitous agaric or toadstool family, with sundry notes on a few conspicuous genera from other families.

      As aptly defined by Carleton Rea in his British Basidiomycetæ, fungi are non-chlorophyllous cryptogams, reproduced by spores. This definition is complete and I do not propose to improve upon it by launching into any detailed explanation of just what a fungus is. By their total absence of chlorophyll, or green photosynthetic pigment, fungi occupy a unique position in the vegetable kingdom and must live either as parasites or saprophytes, without power to manufacture their own food. Moreover, the organs of sex are practically non-existent, occurring only in a few insignificant types; the spore—a simple, microscopic body—is the agency by which fungi are reproduced and disseminated, year after year.

      Although the fungus body proper, consisting of exceedingly fine, interwoven threads (the mycelium), is diffused through the soil or wood substrate on which it feeds and is seldom manifest, the spores are borne in prodigious quantities on a complex and highly organized structure, the sporophore or fruiting body. Fungi display bewildering variety in their fruiting bodies: there are tens of thousands of kinds, ranging in size from microscopic yeast cells to giant, woody bracket fungi measured by the foot. Many grow on the ground like other plants; others flourish in the perpetual gloom of cellars, mines, and caves; some may be looked for on charcoal, manure heaps, or arid wastes of sand; still others inhabit the sea, or grow from the branches of tall forest trees. There are Parasol Fungi, Coral Fungi, Lattice Fungi, and Cup Fungi, all deriving their names from the fantastic shapes assumed by the fruiting bodies which emerge periodically. The old adage, By their fruits ye shall know them, holds good for the fungus world, for it is the character of the sporophore which invariably separates one species from another.

      Disregarding such fungi as mildews, rusts, smuts, slime moulds and the microscopic bacteria, the larger or higher fungi of which our common mushroom is a type, embraces more than 11,000 species. These fall into two great classes, the Basidiomycetæ, with spores borne on sterigmata or stalks arising at the extremity of large broad cells called basidia (see diagram in Fig. 1), and the Ascomycetæ, with spores enclosed in elongated, flask-shaped cells or asci.

      The Basidiomycetæ is further subdivided into orders and families, according to the type of fructification produced. By far the largest family of all is the Agaricaceœ, to which all mushrooms and true toadstools belong. The agarics are distinguished from other fungi by having their spores borne on the surfaces of vertical, radiating plates or gills (hence the name gilled fungi); these gills are situated on the under side of the sporophore and are covered at first by a thin tissue which sometimes forms a veil.

      Dr. E. J. H. Corner pointed out (Oct. 1952) that the present classification of higher Basidiomycetæ, including agarics, is still archaic and too artificial to stimulate research. The fact that any two fungi both have gills (or pores) is purely fortuitous, per se; the sculpture of their respective spores and the internal hyphal structures may place them poles apart systematically. Much more attention should be given to these microscopic characters, also to the physiology, ecology and genetics of the various species.

      The season for fungus hunting in temperate Australia depends upon local climatic conditions and is rather brief. Go to the bushland on a misty day in May or June and you will see these flowerless plants at their best—old logs gleam with translucent masses of coloured jelly, stumps are fringed with rainbow-hued velvet, while the ground is gay with little fleshy cups and clubs of rare metallic sheen, as charming as the patterns in a kaleidoscope. Return thither a week or so later and you will hardly recognize your hunting-ground—its entire fungus population has vanished. Again, in the spring, when warm days begin to replace the periods of damp and cold, quite different types of fungi appear, such as the Morel, though the vernal crop is not nearly so diverse or so abundant as that of autumn. Even in summer, unexpected rains will call forth a few of the puff-ball tribe or an occasional gilled Amanita. As one approaches the Equator, those seasonal differences which usually mark off the appearance and disappearance of fungi in a temperate clime gradually become less distinct, so that in many of our tropical forests there is really no fungus season at all and specimens may be gathered in plenty all the year round; a somewhat analogous condition obtains in Victorian fern gullies, where temperature and humidity fluctuate very little.

      PLATE 1

      —Watercolour by late M. I. Howie, by courtesy of The Sun.

      Victorian Toadstools.

      1. Cortinarius austro-venetus. 2. Craterellus multiplex. 3. Cortinarius sanguineus. 4. Hygrophorus niveus. 5. Cortinarius subarcheri. 6. Lepiota cristata. 7. Galera hypnorum. 8. Little Pin, Omphalia fibula. 9. Hygrophorus miniatus. 10. Mycena vinacea. 11. Amanita pulchella.

      It is only in regions of perpetual ice or of

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