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After his successful elucidation of the moss life cycle, Hedwig attacked the fungi, ferns, and algae, with mixed results. The ferns baffled him completely, as they do alternate generations the way mosses do, but sort of the reverse way. It's complicated to explain, and you can find an explanation on many other web sites, so basically I'll just say that he ended up looking for sexual organs on the generation that produces the spores, which wasn't very productive. Algae he did quite well with, identifying sexual organs in Chara, and illustrating conjugation (as you now see it in biology textbooks) in Spirogyra. With fungi he had very mixed success, and is mainly in here because de Bary and Ramsbottom both credit him with the discovery of the ascus. I think that this is mistaken, as I have seen his Theoria generationis et fructificationis plantarum cryptogamicarum and it seems clear to me that in most cases he didn't even realize that spores were coming from the gills - - instead, he illustrates spore deposits on the top of the annulus and trailing fibrils from the edge of the cap and seems to think that the spores originated in those locations. In one place, he seems to illustrate basidia, which weren't officially recognized for another forty years, but he seems to have interpreted the bubbles and granules in their interior as spores, and decided that the basidia were asci. In fact, from the choice of species that he illustrates, it's not clear to me that he ever observed genuine asci at all! Anyway, I hope to write more about this…
German edition
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