Chapter IV: Reproduction (3)

_c._ GERMINATION OF SPERMATIA (pycnidiospores). The strongest argument in favour of regarding the spermatia of lichens as male cells had always been the impossibility of inducing their germination. That difficulty had at length been overcome by Möller[727] who cultivated them in artificial solutions, and by that means obtained germination in nine different lichen species. He therefore rejected the commonly employed terms spermatia and spermogonia and substituted pycnoconidium and pycnidia. Pycnidiospore has been however preferred as more in accordance with modern fungal terminology. His first experiment was with the “spermatia” of _Buellia punctiformis_ (_B. myriocarpa_) which measure about 8-10 µ in length and about 3 µ in width, and are borne directly on the septate spermatiophores (arthrosterigmata). In a culture drop, the spore had swelled to about double its size by the second or third day, and germination had taken place at both ends, the membrane of the spore being continuous with that of the germinating tube. In a short time cross septa were formed in the hyphae which at first were very close to each other. While apical growth advanced these first formed cells increased in width to twice the original size and, in consequence, became slightly constricted at the septa. In fourteen days a circular patch of mycelium had been formed about 280 µ in diameter. The development exactly resembled that obtained from the ascospores of the same species grown in the absence of gonidia. The largest thallus obtained in either case was about 2 mm. in diameter after three months’ growth. The older hyphae had a tendency to become brownish in colour; those at the periphery remained colourless. In _Opegrapha subsiderella_ the development, though equally successful, was very much slower. The pycnidiospores (or spermatia) have the form of minute bent rods measuring 5·7 µ × 1·5 µ. Each end of the spore produced slender hyphae about the fifth or sixth day after sowing. In four weeks, the whole length of the filament with the spore in the middle was 300 µ. In four months a patch of mycelium was formed 2 mm. in diameter. Growth was even more sluggish with the pycnidiospores of _Opegrapha atra_. In that species they are rod-shaped and 5-6 µ long. Germination took place on the fifth or sixth day and in fourteen days a germination tube was produced about five times the length of the spore. In four weeks the first branching was noticed and was followed by a second branching in the seventh week. In three months the mycelial growth measured 200-300 µ across.

Germination was also observed in a species of _Arthonia_, the spores of which had begun to grow while still in the pycnidium. The most complete results were obtained in species of _Calicium_: in _C. parietinum_ the spores, which are ovoid, slightly bent, and brownish in colour, swelled to an almost globose shape and then germinated by a minute point at the junction of spore and sterigma, and also at the opposite end; very rarely a third germinating tube was formed. Growth was fairly rapid, so that in four weeks there was a loose felt of mycelium measuring about 2 cm. × 1 cm. and 1 mm. in depth. Parallel cultures were carried out with the ascospores and the results in both cases were the same; in five or six weeks small black points appeared, which gradually developed to pycnidia with mature pycnidiospores from which further cultures were obtained.

On _C. trachelinum_, which has a thin greyish-white thallus spreading over old trunks of trees, the pycnidia are usually abundant. Lindsay had noted two different kinds and his observation was confirmed by Möller. The spores in one pycnidium are ovoid, measuring 2·5-3 µ × 1·5-2 µ; in the other rarer form, they are rod-shaped and 5-7 µ long. In the artificial cultures they both swelled, the rod-like spores to double their width before germination, and sometimes several tubes were put forth. Growth was slow, but of exactly the same kind from these two types of spores as from the ascospores. At the end of the second month pycnidia appeared on all the cultures, in each case producing the ovoid type of spore.

In a second paper Möller[729] recorded the partially successful germination of the “spermatia” of _Collema_ (_Leptogium_) _microphyllum_, the species in which Stahl had demonstrated sexual reproduction. Growth was extraordinarily slow: after a month in the culture solution the first swelling of the spermatium prior to germination took place, and some time later small processes were formed in two or three directions. In the fourth month a branched filament was formed.

Möller’s experiments with ascospores and pycnidiospores were primarily undertaken to prove that the lichen hyphae were purely fungal and parasitic on the algae. A series of cultures were made by Hedlund[730] in order to demonstrate that the pycnidiospores were asexual reproductive bodies; they were grown in association with the lichen alga and their germination was followed up to the subsequent formation of a lichen thallus.

_d._ VARIATION IN PYCNIDIA. On the thallus of _Catillaria denigrata_ (_Biatorina synothea_) Hedlund found that there were constantly present two types of pycnidia: the one with short slightly bent spores 4-8 µ × 1·5 µ, the other with much longer bent spores 10-20 µ × 1·5 µ; there were numerous transition forms between the two kinds of spores. Germination took place by the prolongation of the spore; the hypha produced became septate and branches were soon formed. Hedlund found that frequently germination had already begun in the spores expelled from the spermogonium. In newly formed thalline areolae it was possible to trace back the mycelium to innumerable germinating spores of both types, long and short.

Lindsay had recorded more than one form of spermogonium on the same lichen thallus, the spermatia varying considerably in size; but he was most probably dealing with the mixed growth of more than one species. The observations of Möller and Hedlund on this point are more exact, but the limits of variation would very well include the two forms found by Möller in _Calicium trachelinum_; and in the different pycnidia of _Catillaria denigrata_ Hedlund not only observed transition stages between the two kinds of spores, but the longer pycnidiospores, as he himself allows, indicated the elongation prior to germination: there is no good evidence of more than one form in any species.

F. PYCNIDIA WITH MACROSPORES

Tulasne[731] records the presence on the lichen thallus of “pycnidia” as well as of “spermogonia”; the former producing stylospores, larger bodies than spermatia, occasionally septate and containing oil-drops or guttulae. These spores are pyriform or ovoid in shape and are always borne at the tips of simple sporophores. He compared the pycnidia with the fungus genera _Cytospora_, _Septoria_, etc. As a rule they occur on lichens with a poorly developed thallus, on some species of _Lecanora_, _Lecanactis_, _Calicium_, _Porina_, in the family Strigulaceae and in _Peltigera_.

There is no morphological difference between pycnidia and spermogonia except that the spermatia of the latter are narrower; but the difference is so slight that, as Steiner has pointed out, these organs found on _Lecanora piniperda_, _L. Sambuci_ and _L. effusa_ have been described at one time as containing microconidia (spermatia), at another macroconidia (stylospores). He also regards as macrospores those of the pycnidia of _Calicium trachelinum_ which Möller was able to germinate so successfully, and all the more so as they were brownish in colour, true microspores or spermatia being colourless.

Müller[732] has recorded some observations on the pycnidia and stylospores of the Strigulaceae, a family of tropical lichens inhabiting the leaves of the higher plants. On the thallus of _Strigula elegans_ var. _tremula_ from Madagascar and from India, he found pycnidia with stylospores of abnormal dimensions measuring 18-26 µ in length and 3 µ in width, and with 1 to 7 cross septa. In _Strigula complanata_ var. _genuina_ the stylospores were 2-8-septate and varied from 7-65 µ, in length, some of the spores being thus ten times longer than others, while the width remained the same. Müller considers that in these cases the stylospore has already grown to a septate hypha while in the pycnidium. As in the pycnidiospores, described later by Hedlund, the spores had germinated by increase in length followed by septation.

The spermogonia of _Strigula_, which are exactly similar to the pycnidia in size and structure, produce spermatia, measuring about 3 µ × 2 µ, and it is suggested by Müller that the stylospores may represent merely an advanced stage of development of these spermatia. Both organs were constantly associated on the same thallus; but whereas the spermogonia were abundant on the younger part of the thallus at the periphery, they were almost entirely replaced by pycnidia on the older portions near the centre, only a very few spermogonia (presumably younger pycnidial stages) being found in that region.

Lindsay[733] has described a great many different lichen pycnidia, but in many instances he must have been dealing with species of the “Fungi imperfecti” that were growing in association with the scattered granules of crustaceous lichens. There are many fungi—Discomycetes and Pyrenomycetes—parasitic on lichen thalli, and he has, in some cases, undoubtedly been describing their secondary pycnidial form of fruit, which indeed may appear far more frequently than the more perfect ascigerous form, and might easily be mistaken for the pycnidial fructification of the lichen.

G. GENERAL SURVEY

_a._ SEXUAL OR ASEXUAL. It has been necessary to give the preceding detailed account of these various structures—pycnidia or spermogonia—in view of the extreme importance attached to them as the possible male organs of the lichen plant, and, in giving the results obtained by different workers, the terminology employed by each one has been adopted as far as possible: those who consider them to be sexual structures call them spermogonia; those who refuse to accept that view write of them as pycnidia.

Tulasne, Nylander and others unhesitatingly accepted them as male organs without any knowledge of the female cell or of any method of fertilization. Stahl’s discovery of the trichogyne seemed to settle the whole question; but though he had evidence of copulation between the spermatium and the receptive cell or trichogyne he had no real record of any sexual process.

Many modern lichenologists reject the view that they are sexual; they regard them as secondary organs of fructification analogous to the pycnidia so abundant in the related groups of fungi. One would naturally expect these pycnidia to reappear in lichens, and it might be considered somewhat arbitrary to classify pycnidia in Sphaeropsideae as asexual reproductive organs, and then to regard the very similar structures in lichens as sexual spermogonia. It has also been pointed out that when undoubted pycnidia do occur on the lichen thallus, as in _Calicium_, _Strigula_, _Peltigera_, etc., they in no way differ from structures regarded as spermogonia except in the size of the pycnidiospores—and, even among these, there are transition forms. The different types of spermatia can be paralleled among the fungal pycnidiospores and the same is also true as regards the sporophores generally. Those described as arthrosterigmata by Nylander—as endosporous by Steiner—were supposed to be peculiar to lichens; but recently Laubert[734] has described a fungal pycnidium which grew on the trunk of an apple tree and in which the spores are not borne on upright sporophores but are budded off from the cells of the plectenchyma lining the pycnidium. It may be that future research will discover other such instances, though that type of sporophore is evidently of very rare occurrence among fungi.

_b._ COMPARISON WITH FUNGI. The most obvious spermogonia among fungi with which to compare those of lichens occur in the Uredineae where they are associated with the life-cycle of a large number of rust species. They are small flask-shaped structures very much like the simpler forms of pycnidia and they produce innumerable spermatia which are budded off from the tips of simple spermatiophores. The mature spermatium has a delicate cell-wall and contains a thin layer of cytoplasm with a dense nucleus which occupies almost the whole cavity, cytological characters which, as Blackman[735] has pointed out, are characteristic of male cells and are not found in any asexual reproductive spores. If we accept Istvanffi’s[736] description and figures of the lichen spermatia as correct, their structure is wholly different: there being a very small nucleus in the centre of the cell comparable in size with those of the vegetative hyphae (Fig. 115).

Lichen “spermatia” also differ very strikingly from the male cells of any given group of plants in their very great diversity of form and size; but the chief argument adduced by the opponents of the sexual theory is the capacity of germination that has been proved to exist in a fair number of species. It is true that germination has been induced in the spermatia of the Uredines by several research workers—by Plowright[737], Sappin-Trouffy[738] and by Brefeld[739]—who employed artificial nutritive solutions (sugar or honey), but the results obtained were not much more than the budding process of yeast cells. Brefeld also succeeded in germinating the “spermatia” of a pyrenomycetous fungus, _Polystigma rubrum_, one of the germinating tubes reaching a length four times that of the spore; but it is now known that all of these fungal spermatia are non-functional, either sexually or asexually, and degenerate soon after their expulsion, or even while still in the spermogonium.

_c._ INFLUENCE OF SYMBIOSIS. In any consideration of lichens it is constantly necessary to hark back to their origin as symbiotic organisms, and to bear in mind the influence of the composite life on their development. After germination from the spore, the lichen hypha is so dependant on its association with the alga, that, in natural conditions, though it persists without the gonidia for a time, it attains to only a rather feeble growth of mycelial filaments. In nutritive cultures, as Möller has proved, the absence of the alga is partly compensated by the artificial food supply, and a scanty thalline growth is formed up to the stage of pycnidial fruits. Not only in pycnidia but in all the fruiting bodies of lichens, symbiosis has entailed a distinct retrogression in the reproductive importance of the spores, as compared with fungi.

In Ascomycetes, the asci constitute the overwhelming bulk of the hymenium; in most lichens, there are serried ranks of paraphyses with comparatively few asci, and the spores are often imperfectly developed. It would not therefore be surprising if the bodies claimed by Möller and others as pycnidiospores had also lost even to a considerable extent their reproductive capacity.

_d._ VALUE IN DIAGNOSIS. Lichen spermogonia have once and again been found of value in deciding the affinity of related plants, and though there are a number of lichens in which we have no record of their occurrence, they are so constant in others, that they cannot be ignored in any true estimation of species. Nylander laid undue stress on spermogonial characters, considering them of almost higher diagnostic value than the much more important ascosporous fruit. They are, after all, subsidiary organs, and often—especially in crustaceous species—they are absent, or their relation to the species under examination is doubtful.