Flora and Fauna of Discovery Park: Site 3: Fungi

Here on our Bigleaf Maple tree, many kinds of lichens like to grow. This is common on the Maple tree—lichens love this tree. Lichens are actually fungi that have formed a relationship with a photosynthetic organism. The common ones we can see growing here on the bark are: Hammered Shield Lichen (the foliose form that peels upwards), Oakmoss Lichen (the fruticose form that is branched and mossy looking), and Methuselah’s Beard Lichen (also fruticose, but finer).

If we move over to this compost pile, we see the more conventional fungi organism: the mushroom. Here we see a gilled fungus, which is just one form of mushroom. The mushroom is merely the spore-producing structure of the fungus, or the fruiting body (pick it and pass around). The fungus organism itself is actually a network of small living threads underground called hyphae. This body is a mass of hyphae that have grown together and then upwards to pop out of the ground and spread spores. Mushrooms come in many forms. This is a gill form mushroom as you can see by the gills on under the cap. Within these gills are the millions of tiny spores that are easily dispersed when the mushroom is disturbed. Mushrooms are extremely difficult to identify and have grown to closely imitate each other so that poisonous and non-poisonous can hardly be distinguished. Every feature on a mushroom must be closely examined, from its smell, to how it bruises, to the cap shape, and even then you should be cautious!

Some fungi grow on dead, woody material, some form in grass fields, others form on the roots of plants. Either way, the fungi cannot make their own food like plants can, and so they feed off the sugars and carbohydrates that the photosynthetic plants make. The fungi usually provide an exchange with the plants: the plants give sugars and the fungi absorb essential nutrients from the soil that the plants can use. Interestingly enough, fungi are mostly closely related to humans than to plants. One, we share a more recent common ancestor and, two, we cannot produce our own food and therefore feed off carbohydrates and sugars from plants (as well as other materials, of course, for the non-vegans). Other cool fungi we’ve seen here at Discovery Park include the Shaggy Parasol, the Oyster Mushroom, and a species of Amanita.