Everything I know about Mushrooms
It is a slightly cold and damp autumnal day and I am in a park in Scotland, following my toddler discovering the wonders of trees, bushes and grass. Suddenly he points at a small cluster of mushrooms and looks at me curiously. I tell him, “do not touch,” and, for some reason, I take a photo. Snap.
He laughs.
We find more mushrooms.
Snap.
He laughs.
That was how my journey with mushrooms began.
Mushrooms have now become an interest of mine and the more I learn about them, the luckier I feel for having started this journey.
What started as a fun thing to do when out walking with my toddler has now become something I study when I can.
Below I outline what I have learned so far about mushrooms.
What are mushrooms?
Mushrooms are part of the fungi kingdom of organisms.
Fungi are not plants, although they do often work together.
What we think of as mushrooms are actually the fruiting body of the fungi, which is used to distribute the spores for the rest of the organism as part of its reproduction cycle.
The rest of the organism is mostly mycelium, which can live in soil, rotting wood, or animal waste.
How many mushrooms are there?
There are over 4,000 species of mushrooms in the British Isles alone.
In popular British informal terminology a toadstool is poisonous and a mushroom is not poisonous. Although not always edible. This is a linguistic simplification, and not to be used when deciding to eat a mushroom as there are risks.
Identifying mushrooms is hard, and fraught with risk because many poisonous mushrooms have edible look-a-likes and vice versa.
The risks of misidentification include a bad taste in your mouth, food poisoning, psychedelic experiences or death.
Identifying is a process of elimination that requires looking at the component parts, which include the cap, grooved margin, gills, ring, stem and volva. Mushrooms by Patrick Harding has a great flowchart that helps with this.
How do mushrooms work?
The mycelium of a mushroom is made up of hyphae. These are hair-like strands or filaments that grow into networks that form the mycelium.
When two mycelial networks of the same species meet, they can combine and reproduce, resulting in the growth of a fruiting body that releases spores.
Mushrooms detect chemical signatures in soil that help them find friendly plants to swap nutrients with, locate compatible partners, and even hunt microscopic worms.
Broadly, they produce two main types of mushrooms: spore droppers and spore shooters.
Spore droppers will drop spores from their gills onto the wind, whilst spore shooters will actively eject spores into the air.
Join the Newsletter
Plants, soil and mushrooms
Fungi are the third force in nature along with plants and animals and maybe are the most vital. This vitality includes breaking down material into soil (think leaf litter in forests, animal waste in fields etc), and sharing nutrients with plants.
This symbiosis that plants and mushrooms form is called a mycorrhizal relationship. It is a nutrient transfer based on a symbiotic relationship. Plants get nutrients from fungi including zinc, nitrogen and phosphorus. Fungi get carbon.
Mushrooms do not have chlorophyll, so they rely on carbon they cannot produce themselves.
According to Philip Rogers in his book Mushrooms, he points to a study by NASA where plants grown in fungi-rich soil grew over five times larger than those in sterile soil, which is of course important for any mission to Mars.
Mushrooms and conservation
The mycorrhizal relationship between plants and fungi is an important and often overlooked part of the conservation picture and for the growth of crops.
Fungi in soil matter and protecting fungal biodiversity is a foundational part of biodiversity conservation and modern agriculture.
Crops, both for food and forestry, are dependent on the rich fungi ecosystem in the soil. As discussed above, this ecosystem of fungi helps plants to grow. Something often overlooked in the pesticide and herbicide debates.
Other mushroom facts
Taking pictures of them is fun.
Truffles are fungi, essentially smelly underground mushrooms.
Oh and one more thing, I forgot to mention, some people take them as drugs. Some researchers and academics speculate our ancestors ate magic mushrooms and that's how we gain consciousness.
Continuing the journey
As I have been on this journey I have learned a lot and now autumnal walks are always very exciting when you spot a new mushroom to look at. As time goes by I hope to add to my knowledge of fungi, because after all, I am a fun-guy.
Join the Newsletter because I am a Fun-Guy
This knowledge has been acquired through internet research and the books Mushrooms by Patrick Harding and Mushrooms my Roger Philips.