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Mushrooms, How They Fascinate!
These mushrooms popped up next to my transplanted bamboo today. I went right to Dave Fischer's American Mushrooms to find out what these more quotidian variety were ... and became riveted reading about the basics of 'shrooms. The upshot is, there is absolutely nothing basic about mushrooms! They may look unassuming (well - most of the time), but they are as close to a sci-fi / X-files type monster as it gets in your average backyard - unless you live in Puerto Rico, where the legendary Chupacabra dwells.
Read on if you dare...
See, the mushroom itself isn't the actual 'plant' - it is the fruit of the plant, and it's spores are the seeds. The 'plant' is an underground fungus called a mycelium, and they can be as big as a football field - some can be bigger! The mushroom is to the mycelium as an apple is to a tree. That totally freaks me out! So you really can never kill a mushroom - you can pick it, but the mycelium is lurking beneath the ground, ready to send another strange fruit up into the world. In a way, there WAS a sexually aroused garden demon lurking beneath my Phallus duplicatus, because what is a fruit, but a means of sexual reproduction? See - I AM freaking out! Is this an idea for a horror film? I think so!
The mycelium isn't just a horrorshow, it is also a very important part of the big extended family that is a garden. Many species of fungus are micorrhyzal, which means they don't decompose dead matter, they help the roots of plants and trees process water and nutrients. So if it wasn't for these strange, mostrous, mystical fungi, the gardens we love would never thrive. From now on, I'm a fan of even the wierdest of mushrooms - they are so Goth!
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