ABSTRACT
Fungal biology is inextricably linked with spores. Experiments on fungi almost always begin with spores and end when the culture has begun to produce spores. In the middle of the 17th century when fascination with looking at the microscopic-sized objects was developing, a French farmer named Mathieu Tillet (1714-1791) collected a black dusty mass from diseased grains of wheat and applied them to a plot sown with healthy wheat seed. He showed that the powdery mass caused the bunt of wheat, establishing that the disease is seed borne. The Italian botanist Micheli (1679-1737) collected spores of fungi, sowed them on organic substrate (pieces of melon), and put forth the view that fungi arose from their own spores. He described germination of powdery wheat bunt spores for the œrst time, and this was conœrmed by Prevost (1755-1819). The Tulasne brothers, Louis (18151885) and Charles (1817-1884), illustrated spores of several fungi. The German botanist Anton de Bary (1831-1888) traced the germination of spores, including those of the rust fungi (Figure 3.1), to mycelium inside the host plant tissue and its eventual external production of disseminative spores. It thus began to be understood that the vegetative mycelium of fungi is mostly hidden inside the substratum and that what is observed are only the externally produced colored spores. Most fungal spores are dark because of melanin pigment. Some fungi, however, produce colored spores. For example, Penicillium produces blue-green conidia, Fusarium puts forth pink conidia, and Puccinia forms pustules containing rust-colored urediospores, while the mushroom fungi discharge yellowish basidiospores.
