Walking in the garden this morning I observe something new! Overnight, suddenly there are fungi everywhere! White mushrooms, orange mushrooms, puffballs and bracket fungi! The showstopper and the source of my interest was a blue fungus. How unique – a blue mushroom with a royal blue underside or gills. My internet research determined it is commonly called indigo milk mushroom and goes by the scientific name of Lactarius indigo.
So how did these fungi suddenly appear? Like all organisms they need moisture, nutrients and light. This week the conditions were perfect. Fungi spores are opportunists waiting for the perfect conditions to spring into life! Spores can wait for weeks, months and even years to germinate. Fungi do not germinate from seeds but reproduce by spores. Spores wait for the perfect moment to pop out of the ground and grow.
Fungi are not green; therefore, they do not contain chlorophyll and do not carry on photosynthesis, so biologists kicked fungi out of the Plant Kingdom several decades ago and assigned them to their own kingdom, Fungi! Scientists also discovered fungi differ from plants in their cellular structure. Fungi cells contain cell walls like plants, but their chemical composition is different. Plants have cell walls constructed from a chemical called cellulose, but Fungi contain a different chemical called chiton. Like all living things, fungi contain DNA, and variations in the DNA found in the nucleus of fungi can create the many different genera and species assigned to the Fungi Kingdom.
I also observed a fairy ring, a cluster of fungi that grows in a circular pattern. Why in a circular pattern? If we had the ability to view beneath the surface, we would find decaying organic material, the source of nutrients for fungi. Fungi are one of the main contributors of decomposition on the Earth. The fairy ring in…
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