Abstract
IT is a little surprising that fungi should have received so little consideration from academic botanists, for they are more numerous in species and in individuals than is the rest of the plant kingdom. They are classed in the vegetable kingdom, for with the old divisions, plants, animals and minerals, there is nowhere else for them. But they are not plants, in the ordinary sense of the word as they have no chlorophyll and there is no evidence that they were derived from organisms so provided. A great amount of research has been carried out during the last half-century to ascertain the precise methods by which green plants build up carbohydrates; but comparatively little attention has been paid to the manifold and diverse physiological processes by which fungi obtain their nutriment. In their search for food, fungi play many parts in the drama of Nature and in modern affairs.
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RAMSBOTTOM, J. Fungi and Modern Affairs*. Nature 153, 636–641 (1944). https://doi.org/10.1038/153636a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/153636a0