Growth and Decay of a Woodland Mushroom - Amanita rubescens

Mushrooms and toadstools along with brackets, puffballs and the many other kinds of fungi that we see in fields and forests are not strictly living organisms; they are just parts of organisms. Rather as a plum is just the reproductive part of a plum tree, a mushroom is the fruiting part of a fungus that lives unseen beneath the ground or within the timber of a tree.So although a mushroom may appear overnight and expand, shed its spores and decay in no more than a few days, the rest of the fungus, the mycelium as it is termed, lives on just as a plum tree continues living and growing for many years.

Enjoy seeing woodland and grassland mushrooms in the knowledge that as long as their habitats are not destroyed (for example by a parasitic fungus killing its host tree, or a wood-rotting fungus running out of wood to eat!) you can expect to see their 'relatives' popping up in the same locations in future seasons.

Incidentally, Amanita rubescens, the Blusher, is one of the many woodland fungi that live in symbiosis with trees, helping the trees to scour water and vital nutrients from the forest soil and, in return, benefiting from energy-rich products of photosynthesis that the tree delivers from its leaves through its branches, trunk and route system to the fungal mycelium. It's a true win-win partnership known as a mycorrhizal relationship. (The technical term mycorrhizal simply means 'of root and fungus'.)