Hello fellow Steemians !

You may find naturalists talking about plants, animals, may be even microbes, but to find one who talks about fungus !!
Well, not so amazing, no ?...or is it ?!!
Anyways, today I am going to take you through the life of a fungus - the Veiled Lady Fungus(Phallus indusiatus) !

Pixabay License (https://pixabay.com/en/service/terms/#license)

...Oh, well that's not the fungus ! Here it is !

Wikimedia Commons
Author : By Ajaykuyiloor - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14888536

Anything Common between the two ? Yes the VEIL, and the general structure !

INTRODUCTION

1. Fungi : these are basically heterotrophic organisms which digest their food outside their body using hydrolytic enzymes (hydrolases : a class of enzymes that use water to break down chemical bonds) and then absorb it.

• TYPES BASED ON MODE OF NUTRTION :

  • Decomposers : generally feed on dead and decaying organic matter - plant/animal wastes etc. For example Bread Moulds(Below : Pixabay).
    

  • Parasites : derive nutrition directly from the host organism thus depleting it of essential nutrients. These are often pathogenic (Below : An infection Mucormycosis caused by flesh eating fungus !).
    

[Author : Only Human]

Mutualists : derive nutrients from the host, but also reciprocate with actions that benefit the host. Like some mutualist fungi living inside termite species release certain enzymes that help in digesting the wood pulp.

TYPES BASED ON EDIBILITY

• Edible Fungi : Morels, truffles, button mushrooms(Agaricus bisporus, shown below. Source : Pixabay ), etc.
• Inedible Fungi : These are the ones that contain toxic chemicals like Amotoxins (List derived from Wikipedia is given below). Some of these toxins are so potent that a gram of these when ingested accidentally will be sufficient to cause death, or else severe liver and organ failure.

List of Amotoxins(Selective inhibitors of RNA Polymerase II)
[Source : Wikipedia]

1. FUNGAL BODY STRUCTURE

• Single-Celled (Yeast) : We all know and use yeast (common noun !, the one we commonly use for making bread and beer is Saccharomyces cerevisiae).
  
  Yeasts often inhabit moist environments, including plant sap and animal tissues, where there is a ready supply of soluble nutrients, such as sugars and amino acids

• Multi-cellular (Filamentous - most of the visible mushrooms ) : They have a huge underground network of supporting, nutrient absorbing filamentous fibres called hyphae.

  • These hyphae have an chitinous, tubular outer cell wall surrounding the cell membrane.

NOTE : Chitin is the same strong polysaccharide that makes the strong shell and horns of the Rhinoceros beetle and most other beetles !

• The hyphae form a dense network called mycelium.
• The mycelium effectively helps in increasing the surface area for nutrient absorption enormously, so much so that a cubic centimeter of the substrate may have more than 1km in length of hyphae !
• The mycelial cell walls can be partitioned, i.e. each cell saperated from the next by a partition of cell-wall, or it may be continuous/coenoctic/aseptate (all mean the same).
• Specialised hyphae :
  a) Mycorrhizae - mycorrhizal fungi have special mycelia called haustoria which help in absorbing nutrients from the plant root.

  A mycorrhiza is a symbiotic tree-fungi association wherein the plant provides the fungi with energy rich nutrients, in-turn the fungi provides the tree with phosphates - a kind of essential nutrient which is locked up as dead organic matter in the soil and cannot be obtained by the plant directly.
  (Below : An ericoid mycorrhizal fungus isolated from Woollsia pungens, Author : MidgleyDJ at English Wikipedia. - Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons., CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1804169)
  

  b) Trapping hyphae - some parasitic fungi also have a special trapping hyphae to trap and kill organisms on which the fungi will eventually feed !

THE VEILED LADY FUNGUS

First, lets watch this fungus erupt !!

( Author : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-KFzoukS1pfne7ENwBlSrA)

They are commonly known as Stinkhorns, as their conical cap is covered with layer of brown viscous goo which has a salty, stinky odour like that of rotting meat. This attracts a lot of insects and flies.
This fungus(respecfully, a mushroom !) is edible(really !) and is used to make soups and other delicacies in Eastern Asia.

(Tom yuea phai is a Thai soup made with this fungus, Source : Wikipedia)

It's complete personality is very beautifully captured in the following poem by Hannah Singer | October 19, 2012
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An alarming fungus is popping up quick
Called elegant stinkhorn or the devil’s dipstick

As distasteful to the nose as it is to the eyes
Its odor’s designed to attract pesky flies

Insects feed on the slimy stalk
And spread its spores around the block

A member of family Phallaceae and Mutinus genus
Most would agree that it looks like a…
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More about this fungus to come in the next blog in this series EXOTIC FUNGI#1.1) The Veiled Lady Fungus !!

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Another amazing post on fungi by me : CORDYCEPS : The Zombifying Fungus

Keep Absorbing !!
M.Medro

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Bibliography

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phallus_indusiatus
• Campbell's Biology, Tenth Edition by Reece, Urry, Wasserman, Minorsky, Cain, Jackson.