Mushroom
Say it: MUSH-room
A mushroom is the visible spore-producing fruiting body of certain fungi, usually a stalk and cap that grows from a mycelium hidden in soil or wood.
Also: mushrooms
Definition
What is a mushroom?
A mushroom is not a whole organism but the reproductive structure of a fungus, rather as an apple is the fruit of a tree. The main body of the fungus is the mycelium, a network of fine threads called hyphae that spreads through soil, leaf litter or wood and absorbs nutrients. When moisture, temperature and food supply are right, hyphae pack tightly together and push up a fruiting body, often within days, which is why mushrooms seem to spring up overnight after rain.
Most familiar mushrooms belong to the basidiomycetes. On the gills or inside the pores under the cap sit microscopic club-shaped cells called basidia, each of which, after nuclei fuse and undergo meiosis, typically produces four spores. One mushroom can release millions to billions of spores, which drift on air currents and, if they land somewhere suitable, grow into new mycelium. A few mushroom-like fruiting bodies, such as morels, belong to the ascomycetes instead.
Mushrooms matter as food, from button mushrooms to shiitake, and as decomposers and partners of tree roots in mycorrhizae. Some are deadly: the death cap, Amanita phalloides, contains amatoxins that destroy the liver, and several poisonous species closely resemble edible ones.
Word parts
Where does the word “mushroom” come from?
- mushroom
- from a word for a small edible fungus, perhaps linked to mossOld French mousseron
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Terms that go with it
- FungusA fungus is a eukaryote, such as a yeast, mold or mushroom, that has chitin in its cell walls and feeds by absorbing nutrients from its surroundings.
- MyceliumA mycelium is the branching network of thread-like hyphae that forms the main feeding body of a fungus, usually hidden in soil, wood or food.
- HyphaA hypha is one of the long, branching threads that make up the body of most fungi; a tangled mass of hyphae forms a mycelium.
- SporeA spore is a small, hardy reproductive cell made by fungi, plants and some microbes that can spread widely and grow into a new organism on its own.
- MycorrhizaA mycorrhiza is a mutually beneficial partnership between a fungus and plant roots, trading water and soil minerals for sugars made by the plant.
- DecomposerA decomposer is an organism, mainly a bacterium or fungus, that breaks down dead organisms and wastes and returns their nutrients to the environment.
Sources
Checked against
Written for biofideX in plain words, after checking these references:
- OpenStax Biology 2e, 24.2 Classifications of Fungi
- Sánchez-García et al., Fruiting body form, not nutritional mode, is the major driver of diversification in mushroom-forming fungi (PNAS, 2020)
- NCBI MeSH: Agaricales
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