Ecological world

              T he  value influences germination of spores, mycelial growth, enzyme ac-tivity (wood degradation), and fruit body formation. The optimum for wood fungi is often in slightly acid environment of pH 5-6 and for wood bacteria at pH 7. Basidiomycetes have an optimum range of pH 4-6 and a total span of about 2.5-9 (Thornqvist et al. 1987).  Ascomycetes, particularly soft-rot fungi, may tolerate more alkaline substrates to about pH 11. Thus, the pH values from 3.3 -6.4 in the wood capillary water of living trees and in aqueous extracts of wood and bark samples from trees of the temperate zones and from trading timbers (Sandermann and Rothkamm 1959; Rayner and Boddy 1988; Fengel and Wegener 1989; Landi and Staccioli 1992; Roffael et al. 1992a, 1992b) cor-respond with the pH demands of wood fungi. Over the tree cross section, pH differences can occur, that is for example the heartwood of oaks and Douglas fir is more acid than the sapwood.  Furthermore, an initial pH va

                         "Wood fungi" are eukaryotic and carbon-heterotrophic (free from chlorophyll) organisms with chitin in the cell wall, reproduce asexually and/or sexually by non-flagellate spores, filamentous, immovable and mostly land inhabiting. Damage to wood in water by fungi is described by Jones and Irvine , Jones  and Kim and Singh . Soft-rot fungi belonging to the Ascomycetes and Deuteromycetes  destroy wood with high moisture content in water or soil (e.g., Findlay and Savory 1954; Liese 1955). Fungi associated with leaf litter in a woodland stream were treated by Suberkropp .                           A fungal cell, the hypha, is defined as one individual cell of mostly tubular shape that consists of a cell wall, contains a protoplasm with a nucleus and other organelles, and is in the "higher fungi" separated from its one or two neighbors by a transverse wall, the septum (Fig. 2.1). In analogy to the "higher plants", w

            " Wood fungi " are eukaryotic and carbon-heterotrophic (free from chlorophyll) organisms with chitin in the cell wall, reproduce asexually and/or sexually by non-flagellate spores, filamentous, immovable and mostly land inhabiting. Damage to wood in water by fungi is described by Jones and Irvine , Jones  and Kim and Singh . Soft-rot fungi belonging to the Ascomycetes and Deuteromycetes  destroy wood with high moisture content in water or soil (e.g., Findlay and Savory 1954; Liese 1955). Fungi associated with leaf litter in a woodland stream were treated by Suberkropp .  In this book, a fungal cell, the hypha, is defined as one individual cell of mostly tubular shape that consists of a cell wall, contains a protoplasm with a nucleus and other organelles, and is in the "higher fungi" separated from its one or two neighbors by a transverse wall, the septum . In analogy to the "higher plants", where nearly every living cell is connected t