Facts About Mushrooms

This year, I was absolutely FASCINATED with the mushrooms I found during our hikes. If you can imagine a grown woman squealing with joy every time she found a mushroom, well, that was me on every hike.

Sometimes I don't take the time to observe the reality of other life forms, which is why I love being in the forest with no distractions. You can take all the birds out of the forest and still have a forest, but if you remove all of the fungi, the forest would die. Fungi are important players in the game of life. I am absolutely fascinated by the relationships they develop with other life forms, and I hope we as humans can learn something from them. Fungi obviously do not have brains, but they do have a conscious understanding that the relationships they build with different life forms will benefit them, and vise versa. Fungi are so complex. We still have so much to learn from them, but what we do know about them so far is fascinating!

Here are some pictures I snapped in the Porcupine Mountains, along with some interesting facts about the day in the life of fungi:

Mushrooms are the primary agents of decomposing dead plant, animal and wood debris. They do not photosynthesize. Instead, they acquire the nutrients they need to grow from dead wood or leaf litter. Eighty-five billion tons of carbon (in the form of carbon dioxide) is returned to the atmosphere annually, and mainly by fungi. It can take up to one-hundred years for fungi to break down a hard-wood trunk.

Fungi can form a symbiotic relationships with green algae which creates diversely coloured mat-like structures known as lichen.

The part of the fungus that we see is only the “fruit” of the organism. The living body of the fungus is a mycelium made out of a web of tiny filaments called hyphae.

The spores of a mushroom can survive in extreme and dangerous temperatures. Their spores are made of chitin, the hardest naturally-made substance on Earth. This is the same material as the hard outer shells of insects and other arthropods.

Many mushrooms follow the sun, just like plants do. However, scientists do not yet know how mushrooms use sunlight; only that they do.

Some mushrooms' spores can sit dormant for decades or even a century, and still grow if under the right conditions.

Mushrooms want nothing to do with their spore-children. In fact, they send off their offspring as far as possible so they don't compete with them for nutrients.

We only see mushrooms breach the surface when the fungus reproduces sexually. If a fungus never has sex, we might not know it’s there.

Virtually all plants have a relationship with fungi today. Threadlike fungi grow in and around the plant's roots to help absorb nutrients. Science now suggests that plants and fungi have had a close relationship dating back to 460 million years, when fungi helped plants move from sea to land.

Fungi used to be listed under the Plant Kingdom. Then scientists learned that fungi are closer in relation to animals. Fungi and animal proteins look very much alike. It was discovered that both the Animal and Fungi kingdom contained the component, lanosterol. They are still unique and separate life forms, and thus have been placed in their own Kingdom.

Some scientists believe that some fungi found on Earth originally came from outer space.

I am well aware this article serves no purpose to anything of importance. I just wanted to show my appreciation for their very important role on planet earth. There are so many different realities of life that we as humans tend to miss on a daily basis. If it wasn't for fungi, we probably wouldn't be here, and for that, I believe they deserve some credit. Mushrooms have played an incredibly important role in my life, especially when it comes to helping me in the expansion of my own consciousness. With the help of fungi, I not only get to experience being beautifully human, I also get the opportunity to evolve as one, too.

Thanks, Fungi <3