Attractive Characters in Fungi

Abstract

UNDOUBTEDLY there are numerous glutinous fungi, and the coating of gluten has a useful purpose. Whether Mr. Worthington Smith has quite apprehended the nature of that purpose may be an open question. The majority of the species in the genus Hygrophorus are glutinous, and this genus, as a whole, is about the latest in its time of appearance in the autumn. It is very suggestive to observe them apparently unharmed by frost, whilst the Agarics have collapsed, and are in rapid decay. That the glutinous coating is in this instance a protection from frost can scarcely be denied. Dr. Quelet, the French mycologist, has stated that in the Vosges some species of Hygrophorus do not appear until the early frosts have commenced, and he has borne testimony to the fact that they flourish in frosty weather without apparent injury. Both the species of Agaric to which Mr. Smith alludes, Agaricus mucidus and Agaricus radicatus, may be found late in the season, apparently indifferent to the frost, which affords a suspicion that the glutinous coating is a protection from frost. Agaricus carbonarius is viscid, but much more so as cold increases, and for two consecutive years we have watched it growing uninjured far into January, when no other Agaric could be seen. We do not contend that the “useful purpose” is in all cases a protection from frost, because in some early species we imagine it serves primarily as a protection against evaporation. Presuming that Agarics may contain more than 80 per cent of water, such a protection would be of service to species growing in exposed situations. If Mr. Smith's suggestion as to Agaricus mucidus is accepted, it can only apply to that species, and Agaricus adiposus, and one or two others, as the majority of tufted species growing on trunks are not glutinous. Another explanation must be found for the whole Myxacium section of Cortinarius, for Gomphidius, for many of the Boleti, and for such Agarics as Agaricus aruginosus, Agaricus semiglobatus, Agaricus lentus, Agaricus glutinosus, Agaricus roridus, and many others. The idea that gluten “causes fertilization” is a novel one, and may be held as a private opinion, but cannot be accepted generally without evidence much stronger than individual belief; hence, although put forward by so experienced a mycologist as Mr. Worthington Smith, it must not be accepted as an admitted fact, but only as an individual opinion.