British fungi : with a chapter on lichens / by George Massee.

  • Massee, George, 1850-1917.
Date:
[1911?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: British fungi : with a chapter on lichens / by George Massee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    fungi attacking higher plants, can he observed at the present day. Incipient parasites often promptly kill their host-plant ; whereas, at the other extreme, many parasites do not kill the host-plant, neither, so far as our knowledge goes, do they cause the slightest inconvenience, and in some instances the presence of the parasite actually appears to benefit the host-plant. When parasite and host have reached the point, through a long series of struggles against each other, of mutually aiding each other, and doing more for their welfare when working in unison than either could do as a separate Cladonia rangiferina, Reindeer moss individual, the terms “ mutualism ” or “ symbiosis ” are used to express this condition of things. Instances are known where fungi and flowering plants appear to have attained to this condition of mutualism, and colonies of algae are also invariably present in the tissues of certain flowering plants. In all probability fungi were in the first instance parasitic on algae, and through a long series of years this primitive parasitism has gradually evolved into mutualism, the result being our present lichen flora. Cladonia cornucopioides (PL XXXIX, fig. 1).-—A common and very beautiful lichen, growing on the ground on heaths in lowland