Mushroom Trivia
- Mushrooms are a kind of fungi, a major group of living things, originally considered plants but now treated as the separate kingdom Fungi. They occur in all environments on the planet and include important decomposers and parasites.
- Fungi have a vegetative body called a thallus or soma, composed of one-cell-thick filaments called hyphae. They hyphae typically form a microscopic network within the substrate (food source) called the mycelium, through which food is absorbed. Usually the most conspicuous part of any fungus are its fruiting bodies—reproductive structures that produce spores. The mushrooms we like to eat are the fruiting bodies of certain fungi.
- Mushrooms are spread in nature by spores, much the way seeds spread plants. They broadcast spores that colonize and grow where the conditions are right. A mature mushroom will drop as many as 16 billion spores.
- Because mushrooms contain no chlorophyll, they can't photosynthesize their own food, so they rely on other plants for their nutritive energy. Parasitic mushrooms colonize living plants; saprophytic mushrooms live off decaying organic matter.
- Since the body of a mushroom is usually dispersed over a large area, it is rarely noticed. In nature some species of mushrooms may have a body that spreads over hundreds of square miles.
- A population of honey mushrooms (Armillaria ostoyae) in the Blue Mountains of eastern Oregon was found to be the largest single organism in the world, spanning 2200 acres.