May 8th

May 8th
FUNGI

Fungi are a diverse group of organisms that I got the pleasure of learning about on may 8th. During a lecture my class and I attended we got to learn about mushrooms in particular and about their function and purpose in nature.
Mushrooms are decomposers, this means that they eat dead, organic matter. This is also referred to as a “Saprothrop”.
When fungi decompose woody materials it can create white rot, soft rot or brown rot depending on the digestion ability of the type of fungus. The fungi that create white rot can strip lignin by oxidation, this breaks the wood down to its basic components. This allows the fungus to absorb virtually all of the nutrients within the wood. Fungi that are not as good as breaking down wood create soft Rot and Brown rot.
So finally we got to go outside. We walked down to a pine-needle covered area not far from the UW greenhouse and saw a “colony” of sorts of a mushroom called “Agrocybe praecox” (see journal entry May 8th for sketch) It had a tan shell with white cracks. The coloration of the mushroom was darkest in the middle and it felt smooth and dry. The clusters of mushrooms spread occupied the entire area available to them. We were told that all the caps present could be part of the same organism! We can tell the age of each cap by their openness/expanse. The further out the cap reaches, the older it is. On the underside of some caps there is a veil tissue, this is an indicator that the mushroom is young, too young to create spores.
The next mushroom we found was called an oyster mushroom or Pleurotus pulmonarius (see journal entry May 8th for sketch) This mushroom was near the UW farm, growing on a piece of log. It seems to have been purposefully cultivated. The Oyster Mushroom produces white rot which we were able to see on the log. The caps we got to see were quite dried out, but when they are healthy they are normally smooth, with a light tan coloration, and flat. A cool use for them, since they are very good decomposers, is that they can be used to de-contaminate soil!
Right next to the Oyster Mushroom was a Turkey Tail Mushroom or Tremetes versicolor (see journale entry May 8th for sketch). This fungi was named for its looks, as it (allegedly) looks like a turkeys tail. It has an interesting pattern on its cap and even a pattern in it’s texture! It goes fuzzy at the base –bare in the middle – fuzzy at the edge. Turkey Tail is a white-rot mushroom as well but it’s truly interesting feature are its medicinal traits. It has been used in Asian medicine for a variety of ailments and it is used in modern medicine in anti-cancer drugs.

Our next stop was in front of a Button Mushroom Agaricus bisporus that was growing on the UW farm compost pile. It has a white/tan cap and is the same type of mushroom as the Portabello Mushrooms that we eat in the store! When they are young the gills are pink and when they mature their gills are chocolate brown.
To top it all off we also saw Inky Caps Coprinus Iagopus, which are dome shaped when young, and flatten out in maturity. They are red brown at the top and blackish on their underside.
The weather was nice, a tad humid with mostly overcast skies.

Posted on June 5, 2012 06:54 AM by mhf5