Abstract
IT has long since been shown that certain fungi pass through an alternation of generations on the same plant. The Rev. M. J. Berkeley demonstrated that in the case of the common “bunt” at least four consecutive forms of reproductive cellules were produced. In the majority of Uredines there are two forms of fruit, but these can scarcely be regarded as an alternation of generations, since there is no evidence that the spores of Trichobasis by germination, or otherwise, produce the bilocular spores of Puccinia. In Podisoma and Gymnosporangium (if the two genera are really distinct) the bilocular spores germinate freely and produce unilocular secondary spores. Prof. Oersted contends that if these secondary unilocular spores are sown upon young plants of the Sorbus aucuparia, they will germinate, and that the ends of the germinating filaments penetrating the tissues of the leaf of the sorb will in turn produce the spermagonia and peridia of Rœstelia cornuta. This is very similar to the deductions of Prof. de Bary that the spores of the Æcidium which flourishes on the berberry may be employed to inoculate young plants of wheat, and will produce as a result the wheat-mildew (Puccinia graminis), which he contends is another generation of the berberry fungus completed upon a different host. (See NATURE, vol. ii. p. 318)
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COOKE, M. Alternation of Generations in Fungi . Nature 5, 108–109 (1871). https://doi.org/10.1038/005108a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/005108a0