Linda cordell, age 14, of somerset, ky., for her question:
Whet is a saprophyte?
We share our planet with perhaps half a million different plants. All plants need certain chemicals, air, water and sunlight but different species need different amounts of these vital supplies. As dead plants decay, they enrich the soil for new generations. The plant world could get along without us, but we depend upon green plants for our oxygen, and we eat plants and meat and dairy products which come from plant eating animals.
The first half of the word saprophyte means decay; the second half means plant. A saprophyte is a plant which feeds on the dead and decaying material from other plants. Most of the world's plants make their own food from air, water and simple chemicals and use the process of photosynthesis to make sucrose from these raw materials.
Sucrose is a sugar, and green plants convert this basic food into many other chemical compounds and use them to build woody cells and delicate petals, flower perfumes and root cells. Every part of a tree or a green plant is made from the basic sucrose. And to make sucrose, a plant must have green chlorophyll to carry on photosynthesis.
A saprophyte, as a rule, has no green chlorophyll. It cannot make the complex chemicals it needs from raw materials. So it must depend upon other plants. When green plants die, their cells decay and the chemicals they made from sucrose are released in the soil. The saprophyte feeds on these chemicals which it cannot make for itself.
Most saprophytes are pale plants like the fungi. The mushrocius and puffballs are pale saprophytes without green chlorophyll to manufacture their own food. We find them growing in soil which is rich in decaying materials. The mushroom fairy ring tends to grow around the rotting stump of an old tree. Other mushrooms thrive on decaying logs and the dead bark of tree trunks.
The molds and mildews, rusts and smuts are miniature mmbers of the plant world, and they, too, are unable to manufacture their own food from raw materials. Some of them are saprophytes and scme are parasites which feed upon living plants and animals. Some of the bacteria are also saprophytes or parasites. A few plants of the glamorous orchid family are also saprophytes which depend upon decaying plant material for their food.
Rusts and some of the bacteria cause destructive diseases in living plants. Molds and mildews attack our food and clothing. But some saprophytes have an important place in the schme of nature. A ring of mushrooms helps to break up a tough tree stump, and certain bacteria help the fallen leaves decay and return their rich chemicals to the soil.