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Autumnal Treasures
| Article
# : |
16845 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
Date : |
9 / 1989 |
1,483 Words |
| Author
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Branley Allan Branson
Branley Allan Branson is professor of biology emeritus at
Eastern Kentucky University and editor of the Transactions of
the Kentucky Academy of Science. |
Most people living in temperate climatic zones equate autumn with crisp sunlit days and frosty nights, harvest moons, and riotous changes in vegetation colors. But there are many other biological changes in motion at that time of year, some that tend to go unnoticed except by careful observers. Among those changes is the appearance of fall-fruiting fungi.
In his The Sense of Beauty, George Santayana says that the effect of beauty can be produced by the stimulation of the senses by color or sound, or by profuse and delicate detail. These attributes well describe fall-fruiting fungi: They come in a bewildering array of colors; they are often profuse in numbers; and they are unbelievably intricate in their architecture. Like any ephemeral beauty, however, fungi must be sought at the appropriate time to be enjoyed, understood to be truly appreciated.
Being out in nature during autumn requires no justification, yet the pleasures of a nature walk can be augmented by searching for fungi. The fruiting bodies of fungi--called mushrooms, boletes, puff-balls, corals, and other common names--can be found in almost any kind of habitat, from carefully tended lawns and flower gardens to fruit orchards, roadside ditches, and woods. Mixed pine/hardwood forests are often favored habitats. Some of these fungi obtain their food by digesting dead organic material such as logs, leaves, twigs, and other plant debris. Others may form symbiotic relationships with tree roots and obtain food from the living tree. Some of these mycorrhizal species grow with pine roots, others principally with hardwoods such as maples, hickories, or oaks. But the diverse fungi that get their food as parasites on other living organisms usually do not form large, showy, fruiting bodies.
Fungi reproduce by spores that are often single cells, considerably simpler than the seeds of higher plants. Spores that fall on a moist, favorable site may germinate by sending out a threadlike germ tube. If the site is one on which the germ tube can develop into a growing, branching hyphal system, the fungus will thrive.
Mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of a group of fungi that produces spores on special cells. These cells line both sides of thin plates of tissue--called gills--that radiate from the stem on the lower side of the mushroom cap. Boletes have the familiar stalk and cap, but a layer of tubes that open with pores on the underside of the caps instead of gills. Puffballs and earthstars produce their dry powdery masses of spores
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