Tips of the paraphyses are very tightly together at the surface of the hymenium and create a barrier; the epithecium.
2.
A high osmotic pressure in the cells of the epithecium prevent marauding microfauna that would otherwise penetrate and feed on the rich protoplasm below.
3.
But as Barr ( 1987 ) points out, the hamathecium in the Patellariaceae is composed of apically free paraphysoids that form a pseudoepithecium, whereas in the Hysteriaceae the hamathecium is composed of downward-growing pseudoparaphyses that, at maturity, become apically dissociated and may become darkened to form an epithecium.
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