Interesting Facts About Mushrooms that you didn’t know

Mushrooms are delicious, fascinating and unique. They're also dangerous and sometimes just plain weird. But no matter how you feel about them, there's no denying that mushrooms play a significant role in our world and are vital for the ecosystem.

Furthermore, they add new dimensions to our meals and provide us with a bounty of medicinal and nutritional benefits.

Here are some interesting, amazing and fun facts about mushrooms to help you better understand these unique organisms.

 

Mushrooms are neither plants nor animals. They’re a fungus and belong to kingdom fungi, along with yeasts, mildews, molds, rusts and smuts.

 

1. Fungi are genetically closer to humans than they are to plants.

Scientists used to think of fungi as plants, but now we know better. It's been discovered that fungi are more closely related to animals, including humans, than they are to plants.

Here are some of the similarities between fungi and animals:

- Fungi need food, water and oxygen to survive. They use hyphae to absorb nutrients and expel waste products and CO2.

- They absorb nutrients from organic matter, unlike plants that produce food by photosynthesis.

- Fungi have a fibrous substance in their cell walls, much like animals. Plants do not.

 

2. Fungi are among the largest life forms on Earth.

Fungal mycelium can spread out under the ground and grow for miles, searching for food.

The largest living organism on Earth is a honey mushroom (Armillaria ostoyae) in the Malheur National Forest, Oregon, The USA.

It’s around 3.5 miles (5.6 km ) wide, occupies an area of 965 hectares (2,385 acres), and is at least 2,400 years old. But could be much older.

 

3. Fungi allow trees to communicate with each other.

Mycorrhizal fungi have a symbiotic relationship with host trees and plants. The fungi interact with the plant’s roots, getting simple sugars in exchange for food. But their mycelial networks also facilitate the sharing of nutrients and information between plants of different species. In 1997, Suzanne Simard realized that trees were talking to each other using mycorrhizal networks, and came up with the term “Wood Wide Web.” The vast networks of mycelium allow trees to share nutrients and warn each other about droughts, pests and diseases.

There are plenty other interesting facts about mushrooms that we will be discussing in our blog.