Fungi: Their Nature and UsesCooke, M. C. (Mordecai Cubitt)
Science
Fungi: Their Nature and Uses
Cooke, M. C. (Mordecai Cubitt)
Fungi
Although heat and humidity influence all kinds of vegetation, yet heat
seems to exert a less, and humidity a greater, influence on fungi than
on other plants. It is chiefly during the cool moist autumnal weather
that the fleshy fungi flourish most vigorously in our own country, and
we observe their number to increase with the humidity of the season.
Rain falls copiously in the United States, and this is one of the most
fruitful countries known for the fleshy fungi. Hence it is a
reasonable deduction that moisture is a condition favourable to the
development of these plants. The _Myxogastres_, according to Dr. Henry
Carter, are exceedingly abundant--in individuals, at least, if not in
species--in Bombay, and this would lead to the conclusion that the
members of this group are influenced as much by heat as humidity in
their development, borne out by the more plentiful appearance of the
species in this country in the warmer weather of summer.
In the essay to which we have alluded, Fries only attempts the
recognition of two zones in his estimate of the distribution of fungi,
and these are the temperate and tropical. The frigid zone produces no
peculiar types, and is poor in the number of species, whilst no
essential distinction can be drawn between the tropical and
sub-tropical with our present limited information. Even these two
zones must not be accepted too rigidly, since tropical forms will in
some instances, and under favourable conditions, extend far upwards
into the temperate zone.
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