177
THE FUNGUS-ROOT (MYCORRHIZA).
Being a Presidential Address delivered to the Club at the Annual
Meeting on 24th March, 1923.
BY R. PAULSON, F.L.S., F.R.M.S.
(With 3 Plates).
ONE of the time-honoured functions of the Essex Field
Club is the autumn fungus foray, which has been held
annually in Epping Forest since the club was inaugurated in
1880.
At the ordinary meeting, held in connection with the foray
of 1922, the suggestion was made that it is advisable, in addi-
tion to the systematic work, to attempt some investigations
having a biological, ecological and even economic bias, and
further, that one indoor meeting, devoted entirely to fungi,
might be arranged each year just previous to the autumn outdoor
gathering. At the foray itself, the specialist has little time
in which to explain matters; the energies of the day are directed
towards collecting and arranging in systematic order for the
purposes of exhibition, hence the advantage of an indoor meeting
before, or shortly after, the annual foray.
Fungus forays, having been organised annually for forty-two
years in succession, have enabled the Club to record the Forest
fungus flora in its many aspects, resulting from varied weather
conditions, not only those conditions existing during the few
weeks immediately before the foray, but those that marked the
character of the weather for the whole previous year. The listing
of species has been so thoroughly carried out with the invaluable
aid of many mycological experts, that there is little prospect of
adding many more of the larger fungi, Basidiomycetes and
Discomycetes, to the flora. This does not mitigate in the
slightest degree against the continued holding of the foray annu-
ally. There is every reason for carrying it on in the future as
in the past, for it is only in connection with this well tried scheme
that the additional, somewhat broader outlook will receive the
impetus that engenders progress.
M