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These parasites usually penetrate the tissues of the host plant by dissolving out the middle lamella material, which may sometimes serve as food material for the fungus; but more often the parasite secures its food supply from the protoplasm of the cell contents.

They are the principal constituents of "woody fiber," of cell-walls, and of the "middle lamella" which fills up the spaces between the plant cells.

These all seem to be products of hydrolysis of a mother substance known as "pectose," which constitutes the middle lamella of unripe fruit, etc.

The work of van Tieghem, van Senus, Fribes, Omeliansky and others has now shown that while certain anaerobic bacteria decompose the substance of the middle lamella—chiefly pectin compounds—and thus bring about the isolation of the cellulose fibres when, for instance, flax is steeped or "retted," they are unable to attack the cellulose itself.

Polyporus fulvus is remarkable because its hyphæ destroy the middle lamella, and thus isolate the tracheides in the timber of firs; Polyporus borealis also produces disease in the timber of standing conifers; Polyporus igniarius is one of the commonest parasites on trees such as the oak, etc., and produces in them a disease not unlike that due to the last form mentioned; Polyporus dryadeus also destroys oaks, and is again remarkable because its hyphæ destroy the middle lamella.