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Rogue11
Senior Member
Posts: 202
Joined: Sun Mar 27, 2011 2:22 pm
Location: Orange County, California

Where do little mushrooms come from, Mom?

Yeah, where do they come from?
This morning my client's 3 year old son noticed some mushrooms in the garden and asked me if I had planted them (he has been watching and helping me with the garden). I told him that I didn't, so he asked me. "Then where did they come from?"
Truth to be told I don't have the slightest idea. When my own kids were little we once tried a mushroom growing kit for fun and it came with some kind of spawn the mushrooms grew from. But where do mushroom spores come from in the wild?

cynthia_h
Super Green Thumb
Posts: 7500
Joined: Tue May 06, 2008 7:02 pm
Location: El Cerrito, CA

The wind. The soil.

Cynthia H.
Sunset Zone 17, USDA Zone 9

TZ -OH6
Super Green Thumb
Posts: 2097
Joined: Fri Jul 25, 2008 7:27 pm
Location: Mid Ohio

Microscopic spores released from the gills under the cap. You can put a freshly opened cap on a piece of paper over night and see the spores. They are not really seeds, but do the same job. The mushroom is a reproductive structure quickly created/built to raise spores up of the ground where wind can catch the spores. The feeding part of the fungus consists of a huge network of thread like filaments only one cell thick (seen as the fuzzy white stuff in the refrigerator or compost pile). There are actually 'male' and 'female' individuals, but since they don't have "parts" the are termed (+) and (-) mating types. Two plusses or two minusses won't combine to produce a mushroom.



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