Mushrooms are the third kingdom, as they are sometimes called, because they do not belong to either plants or animals, occupying a separate position. Someone collects mushrooms in the woods at the dacha, someone buys in the store … Anyway, mushrooms occupy a prominent place in the kitchen of many different peoples.
Mushrooms are the most diverse living creatures on the planet. Presumably they exist from one to two million species, although in our time only about one hundred thousand have been studied.
Mushrooms are edible, inedible and poisonous.
The main body of the fungus is the so-called mycelium, stretching for a huge distance under the ground, and what we see on the surface is just a fruit.
Mushrooms know how to enter into symbiosis with trees.
In many countries only champignons eat food without collecting forest mushrooms.
The most expensive mushrooms in the world are truffles, their price sometimes reaches several thousand euros per kilogram.
Mushrooms, along with ferns – the most ancient inhabitants of the Earth, they even survived dinosaurs.
Mushrooms survived in the area of the Chernobyl accident.
The plasmodium fungus, widespread in Russia, can move, albeit slowly, at a rate of about a centimeter per hour. It looks like a translucent piece of jelly.
Ordinary spruce, other common mushrooms in Russia – the fastest growing among mushrooms. They can grow by a centimeter every few minutes.
The largest fungus was found in the US, it weighed about 140 kilograms, and the weight of the largest found mycelium was about two hundred tons.
In the national park in Switzerland there is a mushroom picking that covers almost half a square kilometer. Its age is about a thousand years.
Some species of mushrooms hunt nematode worms, enticing them into a trap.
Mushroom spores are found in the air almost everywhere, even in urban areas.
Fungi can grow through concrete and asphalt.
The majority of mushrooms are nine-tenths of water.
A small piece of pale toadstool is capable of killing a person who swallows it.
Popular russula in Russia in some European countries are classified as inedible mushrooms.
In the taiga grows a huge number of different types of mushrooms.
Spores of mushrooms can wait patiently for years suitable conditions to germinate.
Some species of fungi phosphoresce, that is, glow in the dark.
The most popular mushrooms in the world are cultivated artificially – not champignons, but shiitake.
Mushrooms-trutoviki growing on trees, live to eighty years.
