Monograph of the Truffles

The parenchyma is divided into many fragments of various shapes by opaque, whitish septa, visible to the naked eye, which elegantly mark the flesh of the Truffles. These septa, which are generally called veins, consist of a double membrane that, when examined under a microscope, presents the same structure as that which we observed in the tubercles, papillae, and the external surface of the rind (6). This is certainly not surprising when one notes that the veins are formed by the rind itself, which, as it is pushed in here and there, sends folds into the interior of the Truffle and composes its entire mass.

The Truffle can indeed be compared, in its own weighed origin, to the vesicle that I designate by the name of uterus, whose walls, which I would call peridia outer skins/coverings, bear sporangia within their proper context. Imagine now that the peridium is pushed inward from the outside, for whatever reason. The result will be that the cavity which it encompasses is more or less perfectly obliterated, according to whether it has been pushed in less or more. From this varied mode of inward-pushing and complication is generated the flesh of the uterus, intersected everywhere by veins and wonderfully marked. The order of the veins, therefore, will be twofold: either formed from the folds of the outer surface of the pushed-in peridium, or from the mutual application of the inner surface of the peridium itself. The former are most manifest, communicate with the exterior, and serve for the nutrition of the Truffle (ducts of lymph); the latter are barely visible, closed on all sides, and do not communicate with the exterior, and their use is uncertain. Since, however, the external surface of the peridium very rarely agrees with the internal one in terms of structure and character, the external veins are usually distinct from the internal ones.

The Genus verrucosa warty (tab. II, fig. VII) exhibits the first degree of this singular organization: the peridium of this most elegant fungus is pushed in only slightly and in various places, and it does not entirely delete the cavity of the uterus, but only forms bubbles or tubercles on its internal surface, which correspond to the introduction of the peridium. If the peridium is cut in such a way that these tubercles are split through the middle, a fine line (the rudiment of a vein) of a pale color, leading from the external origin, is most clearly observed in the center, which clearly corresponds to the folding of the externally pushed-in peridium.

Genea bombycina (tab. III, fig. XIII), already more...