The main groups of mushrooms are: Gilled mushrooms with stipe and cap and gills beneath (Portabellas), Boletes with stipe and cap with bores beneath (spongy looking), Tooth Fungi with stipe and cap and teeth beneath (no gills), Morels and Relatives with stipe and hood shaped cap, Polypores bracket shaped with pores, gills or teeth beneath or smooth (artist fungus that people use to draw on it), Cup Fungi that are cup shaped with or without stipe, Puffballs that puff in the air (globose, pear or star shaped), Coral Fungi club shaped or branched (looks like a coral), Parchment Fungi (looks like paper and grows on wood) smooth or with pores/ teeth, Jelly Fungi (feels like jelly) gelatinous, grows on wood. Explained Andre Leite Alves that lives in Rochester NY



Mushrooms have their own kingdom in nature just like plants and animals some other examples are athletics foot and red mold and they do not make their own food. People are very interested on them because they come in different colors, shapes and change very quickly over time. The main question we ask ourselves is if mushrooms are ok to eat or if they have any poison. We can die from eating the wrong type mushroom; we had a case of death a couple weeks ago in our area.

Only a small percentage of mushrooms are eatable, a substance called toxicants is what makes them harmful to us. These toxicants can attack our liver depending on the specie. Rochester has over 1500 species and that makes really hard to identify them, it takes many years and training in order to be able to fully identify them in the correct way. With just the introduction class we had, there is no way I would be able to identify and know that they are.

Mushrooms are decomposers; they break down organic materials and can be called natural recyclers. Some mushrooms live in conjunction with plant roots. The roots of plants get finer and finer, the finest root is called root hair. Many roots are covered by fungi and can only be seen under a microscope. Mircelium is a very thin microscopic fungus. Mr. Andre Leite Alves explained that they bring the tree nutrients, in nature and in life it has to be something we get back. In this case the mushrooms provide nutrients to the plants and the plants provide sugar to the mushroom by doing photosynthesis; it's a two way relationship since the tree is providing carbohydrate to the mushroom. The right specie fungi will help trees grow.

Fungi reproduce by spores that are produced by the fungi, giant puff balls that have a smoke like type of spore when we squeeze. This ?smoke? are the spores that fly out and we do not see them unless if we do a print. Spoor prints are a good way to identify mushroom, they are also their reproductive units. The hypha comes from spores and break down organic materials. Two hypha get together and reproduce, each hypa has a half and when they are combined they make one full number; ex: halfloid than diploid if conditions are right they take on water and produce a mushroom then they will create more spores and produce more mushrooms. Their ground time frame is about weeks and then when conditions are right they appear. Only a few are parasitic and could grow on inside dead tree trunks and feed on trees food. Honey mushroom is a parasite and it is eatable. Warms feed of mushrooms, when I broke down a mushroom I was able to see the warm inside of it feeding off the fungi.

The shape of the mushroom cap helps us identify its type, another way is to see if it has gills and we can look under a microscope to see if they are close a part.

I learned that mushrooms are not just interesting because of their colors or their shape. I am fascinated with them and how I was able to taste some and they were really delicious. I wished I could get some chicken mushroom and prepare it at home and serve as a dinner appetizer and have people amazed by it. I will come back and collect some next year and serve it. I also learned that they can be very harmful to us even that they are not to other animals. We were blessed to have had as many types of mushrooms as we did on our field trip. Now I am very interested on the species that grow in Brazil if I am not mistaking there is a mushroom that the natives use that is very powerful and can make you hallucinate for many days. There is a ritual that involves the use of these fungi.