Mushrooms are Adult Mycelium | Accent on Natural Landscaping

Reference my blog posts from 2016 and 2018: How Trees Talk to Each Other and How Trees Talk to Each Other Update.

“Mushrooms are adult mycelium” is a simplified analogy used to explain the relationship between the visible mushroom and the hidden, main body of the fungus, which is known as mycelium.

Did you know?

Mycelium can be vast and long-lived, far exceeding the size of the temporary mushrooms. Turkeytail bracket mushroom (*Trametes versicolor*).

“Did you know that long before trees overtook the land, Earth was covered by giant mushrooms? Researchers found that land plants had evolved on Earth by about 700 million years ago and land fungi by about 1,300 million years ago.” (The Conscious Club) The very first trees evolved approximately 350 to 420 million years ago.

Mushrooms are designed for reproduction (fruiting bodies), while mycelium acts as the nutrient-absorbing, underground network consisting of a network of fine, white, threadlike filaments.

Mycelium: The Main Organism

The threadlike filaments called hyphae can live for years or even centuries. Courtesy of Lex vB of Dutch Wikipedia.

Mycelium is an underground, interconnected network of thin, threadlike filaments called hyphae. It looks like white, fuzzy roots, but it is not a root system in the plant sense. Plants produce food through photosynthesis and use roots for absorption and anchorage. Fungi digest food externally by secreting enzymes into their environment (wood, leaves, soil, bacteria, etc.) and then absorbing the broken-down nutrients.

Note: The world’s largest organism is a honey mushroom network that spans 2.4 miles across the Malheur National Forest in the Blue Mountains of Oregon.

Mushrooms: The “Fruiting Body“

Similar to an apple tree, a mushroom appears, does its job (reproduction), and dies, while the organism’s mycelium continues to live. *Clitocybe mycelium* by Timothy A. Peden of Wikipedia.

A mushroom is the temporary, above-ground structure of a fungus. Mushrooms are primarily for reproduction: Their main purpose is to produce and release spores, which can germinate and grow into new mycelium. Mushrooms are usually temporary and highly perishable, appearing only when conditions such as moisture and temperature are right.

Mycelium must grow and mature, absorbing enough nutrients to support the process of creating a mushroom. Just as an adult tree produces fruit to create seeds, a mature fungus produces a mushroom to create spores.

Conclusion

Mycelium is the active, hidden, long-term body of the organism, while the mushroom is the fleeting, mature, reproductive adult phase. Spores germinate into mycelium, which grows, spreads, and eventually produces mushrooms to disperse new spores.