Fungi

2002/09/30 Elhuyar Zientzia

• Botanika

At this time the corners of Euskal Herria are filled with mushrooms. Like every year, people will travel through corners, if possible at a time when no one can see them and attentive to the rumors that spread here and there.

The photo, although it is not a fungus, like blasphemy, is a fungus that you will surely have swallowed several times. That is the appearance of bread mold seen from the microscope.

The mushroom is a set of members of different sizes and shapes; to be taxonomically correct, the kingdom. Yeasts, molds and fungi we receive on the mountain, despite their apparent difference, have a number of common characteristics: they are made up of eukaryotic cells, that is, they keep the DNA inside a nucleus like us, but they are not able to perform photosynthesis like plants.

To feed, they absorb through the cell wall foods containing living or dead organic matter. Some, like sugars, easily dissolve them and others break them with enzymes. Fungi clean the area as they eat dead plants and animals.

In general, fungi grow better in slightly acidic means, but they can be found almost everywhere: in the soil, in the bodies of the living, in the plants, in the fresh water, in the salt water... in a tablespoon of land there are about 120,000 mushrooms. Let not all the sheets be onddovelas.