Fungus

It’s mushroom season here in Colorado and I’m thinking back to all of the amazing fungus I’ve seen here.  Some of my favorite specimens are below:

I am also remembering how awesomely bizarre mushrooms are.  The mushroom itself is just the fruit of the plant.  The main body of the organism lives below ground forming a web.  It is actually incorrect to say that mushrooms are plants though.  The great and powerful Google put it this way:

A mushroom cannot be simply classified as either an animal or a plant. It is obviously not an animal as it does not eat either animals or plants, which is a rather simplistic way to classify animals. It is not, theoretically, a plant because it does not contain chlorophyll and cannot make its own food, which is one of the methods by which a plant is classified as a plant. Mushrooms actually absorb food and nutrients from decaying matter around them.

Not an animal or a plant…fascinating. 

Here are some time lapse videos of mushrooms.  Warning: mushrooms can look quite phallic in their early stages of growth.

 

If you want to learn a few facts about mushrooms from David Attenborough, watch this video through to almost 4 minutes (you may be forced to watch an ad first):