BY AMY SHMANIA, PHOTOS BY DAVID SALOMON
Going out into a coastal forest in the damp northern California winter can be an exciting adventure—you might spot a banana slug on the path, a newt swimming in a pool of water, even adult salmon swimming upstream to spawn, and, once you start looking, you might find a rainbow of fascinating mushrooms all around you. Here at the Woods, we have seemingly endless species of mushrooms—all colors, shapes, sizes, and textures. And we think that’s pretty exciting. So what’s the scoop on the Kingdom of Fungi and why it is important? Read on for a few of my favorite fungi facts.
1. While mushrooms are often the most obvious parts of the fungi that we see, they are in fact only the fruiting body—think apple or orange—of the larger organism. Mushrooms produce spores that allow the fungi to reproduce, similar to how fruits contain seeds. Not all fungi even produce mushrooms!
2. Have you ever noticed a white substance under leaves or deep in the forest soil? You were probably looking at mycelium. According to Mushrooms of the Redwood Coast, mycelium is made up of “tubelike structures called hyphae…strung together in long chains and branching networks that form a sort of carpet” (3). You might be tempted to think of mycelium as the roots of the mushroom, but in fact this mat of white material is the main body of the organism.
3. Nom nom nom. Like animals, fungi are heterotrophs—they must consume other organisms to survive. But with body structures very different from animals, fungi have a unique tactic for consuming nutrients. In Mushrooms of the Redwood Coast, authors Christian Schwartz and Noah Siegel explain that the mycelia exude enzymes that break down the organic matter around them: once the material is broken down, the fungi can absorb it (2).
4. Mushrooms don’t live in a vacuum—they are an essential part of the forest ecosystem. Many fungi form mutualistic relationships with specific species of trees and other plants, called mycorrhizal relationships, where the mycelium and the roots of the plant share water, nutrients, and sugar (Swartz and Siegel 3). As we just learned, fungi can absorb nutrients (and water) from the soil, while plants can produce their own sugar.
5. Scientists have even discovered that these mycorrhizal relationships allow trees in a forest to communicate with each other! According to Peter Wohlleben, scientist and author of The Secret Life of Trees, “Trees share water and nutrients through the networks, and also use them to communicate…about drought and disease, for example, or insect attacks, and other trees alter their behavior when they receive these messages.”
6. Micorrhiza and Climate Change. According to a 2019 study, globally “Ecosystems encompassing mycorrhizal vegetation store on the order of 350 gigatons of carbon globally, compared to just 29 gigatons stored in non-mycorrhizal vegetation.” The study explains that human impact on natural ecosystems has reduced the areas where these relationships exist and suggests that restoring native plants with micorrhiza might be a way to increase the absorption of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
7. There’s so much more to learn about fungi, and, in this relatively untapped field of study, there’s plenty scientists don’t even know yet! So get out there, pay attention, and see what you can find!
Sources:
Grant, Richard, and Diana Markosian. “Do Trees Talk to Each Other?” Smithsonian Magazine, March 2018, www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-whispering-trees-180968084/.
International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis. "Plants and fungi together could slow climate change." ScienceDaily, 7 November 2019, www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191107084034.htm.
Schwarz, Christian, and Noah Siegel. Mushrooms of the Redwood Coast: a Comprehensive Guide to the Fungi of Coastal Northern California. Ten Speed Press, 2016.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Heterotroph.” Encyclopaedia Brittanica, 13 November 2019, www.britannica.com/science/heterotroph.