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The entanglement of fungal hyphae remains
invisible underground. We usually only see the
above-ground fruiting bodies.
Many fungi have lamellas on the underside of
their cap (head) on which the spores are formed.
The Inner Life of Fungi
To explore the inner life of a fungus, you will need:
• a slide and a cover slip
• water and the pipette
• the dissecting needle
• a kitchen knife
• a button mushroom or another kind of culinary mushroom
Cut the entire mushroom using a knife along its length into two halves and
use the tweezers to pluck a bit from the inside of the stem. Usually, fun-
gal material obtained in this way is still too thick to be observed under the
microscope. You should therefore pluck the piece apart even more using the
tweezers and a needle in a drop of water on the slide. Cover your specimen
with a cover slip and examine it at gradually higher magnifications until you
reach the highest one. Under the microscope, you can see that the fungus is
constructed of individual, long threads, the so-called fungal hyphae. These
threads are woven together and hence produce a stable, net-like structure. But
this is not a solid tissue complex as is the case with plants. This is how fungi dif-
fer clearly from the compact structure of plants.
Fungal hyphae run through the entire forest floor but are invisible to us. Only in
some places, and when it's warm and moist enough, do fruiting bodies grow out
of these fungal threads — which we then refer to as actual mushrooms in our
everyday language. So what we see of forest mushrooms is actually only the "tip
of the iceberg," so to speak.
Although the stem and cap of a mushroom are referred to as a fruiting body, fungi
do not spread by means of fruit and seeds like most plants, but rather by means of
spores. In the case of a button mushroom, you will see many thin lamellas on the
underside of the cap. It is in these lamellas that tiny little grains, the fungal spores,
are formed. They are so light that they are carried by the wind in all directions.
If they land in a suitable spot, then they germinate into new fungal threads and
form a new fruiting body when the time and conditions are right.
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