Natural History. Stewardship. Sustainablility.
MUSHROOMS are the spore-producing parts (sporophores or "fruiting bodies") of a fungus. Some spore bodies are tasty and nutritious (USDA Nutrition Database (July 2001)) and some are inedible or poisonous, as above. They appear when moisture and other conditions are right. Each microscopic spore under the right conditions can germinate like a seed into new feeding hairs of the fungus.
The feeding part of the fungus is in the soil, tree or log where you may see some of it (white hairs or layers) if you do some digging around in the duff (soil layer of decaying dropped leaves) or peeling off the loosened bark of a dead tree trunk. The feeding part of the fungus will live until it runs out of food, often for years. Many fungi are major wood decomposer in the forest that help make a good soil.
The spore body is produced by the feeding hairs in order to get the spores (The Hidden Forest) into the air. Microscopic spores dropped into the breezes from the pores or surfaces of the gills inside the caps of mushrooms can travel high in the atmosphere for thousands of miles. Other spore bodies attract feeding animals which can spread the spores (e.g. pigs, flying squirrels, voles, and other animals on truffles, and the flies on stinkhorn fungi .
The spore bodies found on living or dead trees often have other shapes: conks, shelves, hooves, brackets, etc. Many of these spore bodies are perennials that live for a number of years. Many of these release the spores from many pores seen on the underside of the spore body. A bunch of spores, like pollen, look like fog in the air and can create a cover over surfaces they have accumulated on.
Many of our common well-known mushrooms on the forest floor are highly beneficial to our forests , by way of mycorrhizae (see a list of our common tree & fungi species & Fig.1 in that link) that connect the feeding hairs of the fungus to the feeding tips of tree roots, & to flowering plants like Indian Pipe (Mark.Moran@fcps.edu).
LICHENS have a body that is a species of fungus. The fungus body holds within it cells of a species of green alga, and sometimes cells of a species of nitrogen-fixing blue-green bacterium as well.