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yeast

(Encyclopedia)yeast, name applied specifically to a certain group of microscopic fungi and to commercial products consisting of masses of dried yeast cells or of yeast mixed with a starchy material and pressed into...

De Bary, Heinrich Anton

(Encyclopedia)De Bary, Heinrich Anton hīnˈrĭkh änˈtōn də bärēˈ [key], 1831–88, German botanist. He was professor at the universities of Freiburg in Breisgau (1855–66) and Halle (1867–72) and first r...

rust, in botany

(Encyclopedia)rust, in botany, name for various parasitic fungi of the order Uredinales and for the diseases of plants that they cause. Rusts form reddish patches of spores on the host plant. About 7,000 species ar...

isogamy

(Encyclopedia)isogamy īsŏgˈəmē [key], in biology, a condition in which the sexual cells, or gametes, are of the same form and size and are usually indistinguishable from each other. Many algae and some fungi h...

puffball

(Encyclopedia)puffball or smokeball, fungus in which the aboveground portion is typically a stemless brownish sac with an opening at the top through which issues the dustlike mass of ripe spores. The common puffbal...

thallophyte

(Encyclopedia)thallophyte, common name for members of the Thallophyta (or Thallobionta), a taxonomic group in some archaic classification systems that comprised algae, fungi, and lichens. The thallophytes were cons...

erythromycin

(Encyclopedia)erythromycin ĭrĭthˌrōmīˈsĭn [key], any of several related antibiotic drugs produced by bacteria of the genus Streptomyces (see antibiotic). Erythromycin is most effective against gram-positive ...

lichen

(Encyclopedia)lichen līˈkən [key], usually slow-growing organism of simple structure, composed of fungi (see Fungi) and photosynthetic green algae or cyanobacteria living together in a symbiotic relationship and...

cryptogam

(Encyclopedia)cryptogam, in botany, term used to denote a plant that produces spores, as in algae, fungi, mosses, and ferns, but not seeds. The term cryptogam, from the Greek kryptos, meaning “hidden,” and gamo...

diseases of plants

(Encyclopedia)diseases of plants. Most plant diseases are caused by fungi, bacteria, and viruses. Although the term disease is usually used only for the destruction of live plants, the action of dry rot and the rot...