Rust, smut, mildew & mould : An introduction to the study of microscopic fungi / [M.C. Cooke].

  • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Rust, smut, mildew & mould : An introduction to the study of microscopic fungi / [M.C. Cooke]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    doubtless, capable of reproducing its species, and if we compute 2,000 cluster-cups as occurring on each leaf, and we have found half as many more on an ordinary-sized leaf, and suppose each cup to contain 250,000 spores, which again is below the actual number, then we shall have not less than five hundred millions of reproductive bodies on one leaf of the goatsbeard to furnish a crop of parasites for the plants of the succeeding year. We must reckon by millions, and our figures and faculties fail in appreciating the myriads of spores which compose the orange dust produced upon one infected cluster of plants of Tragopogon. Nor is this all, for our number represents only the actual protospores which are contained within the peridia; « each of these on germination may produce not only one but many vegetative spores, which are exceedingly minute, and, individually, may be regarded as embryos of a fresh crop of cluster- cups. And this is not the only enemy of the kind to which this unfortunate plant is subject, for another fungus equally prolific often takes posses- sion of the interior of the involucre wherein the young florets are hid, and converts the whole into a mass of purplish black spores even more minute than those of the JEcidium, and both these para- sites will be occasionally found flourishing on the same plant at the same time (plate V. figs. 92—94). Naturally enough, our reader will be debating within himself how these spores, which we have
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