If you have ever seen mold growing on an old loaf of bread or eaten a mushroom, you have encountered a fungus. Fungi (that’s the plural of fungus) are a group of organisms, or living things, that are all around us. Mold on bread and mushrooms on pizza are both examples of fungi.

Fungi have an important job. They help break down other material, so that living things are able to grow in soil. This helps make nutritious foods for other organisms. Fungi are needed for life!

Do you think mushrooms are plants? Scientists used to think that all fungi were plants. Now they know that there are some very important different between these two groups of organisms. One of the most important differences is that plants are autotrophic. This means that they can make their own food, just by using the sunlight. Fungi can’t do this. They have to “eat” other living things in order to get the energy they need. This is called being heterotrophic.

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Another difference between plants and fungi is that fungi have cell walls like plants do, but their cell walls are made of chitin. Chitin is a material containing nitrogen that is also found in the shells of animals including beetles and lobsters.

Fungi do not have a vascular system, the system used to transport water and nutrients in plants, but do have hyphae, a structure you will learn about in the next section. Although mold and mushrooms are easy to see, most fungi are a lot harder to see. Some are so small they can only be seen with a microscope.

Others are big enough to see, but live in places that make them hard to find. For example, some fungi live deep in the soil, in decaying logs, inside plants and animals, or even inside or on top of other fungi!

Scientists have estimated that there are 1.5 million species of fungi, and these organisms live all over.  Most are found on land, although some do live in water.  Some fungi can even live in deserts.  No matter their environment, fungi act as decomposers.  This means that the fungi break down materials to make their environment better for other organisms to grow.

Humans use fungi for many purposes.  One of the most common uses is in food.  Mushrooms are eaten by many people on pizza or in salads. But yeast is used in the fermentation process to make beer, wine, and bread.

We’re going to learn how to grow our own mushrooms in this video below. Remember, never eat a mushroom unless you check with an expert first. Poisonous mushrooms look similar to edible ones, so be absolutely certain which kind it is before popping one in your mouth.

NEVER pick wild mushrooms! In addition to the uncertainty in the type of mushroom, there’s also possible harmful bacteria growing on the mushroom.

Fungi are also important in the production of some antibiotics, including penicillin and the chitin in cell walls has been said to have wound healing properties.

Learn more about Kenny and mushrooms from Veggie Gardening Tips!

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If your kitchen is like most kitchens, you probably have cabinets for cups and pots and pans, along with drawers for silverware and cooking utensils.  You might also have a drawer you call the “junk drawer.”  The things in this drawer aren’t actually “junk.”  If they were, you’d throw them away.  Instead, things usually get put here because they just don’t fit anywhere else.

You might be surprised to learn that the system for classifying organisms has its own “junk drawer.”  It’s called the protist kingdom.  Its members, like the contents of your kitchen junk drawer, are important, but don’t fit nicely in one of the other kingdoms.

Broadly, protists can be classified as animal-like, plant-like, or fungus-like.  It is important to remember that being “animal-like” does not make a protist an animal.  Such and organism, like plant-like or fungus-like protists, are members of an entirely different group of living things.

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Amoeba are protists that walk using a method called a false foot, or pseudopodia. The amoeba extend a “false foot” and then pull the rest of their body along with them.

Animal-like protists are called protozoa. Like animals, protozoa can move on their own and are heterotrophic. Some protozoa eat by wrapping their bodies around their prey, creating a “food storage compartment.” Toxins are then produced which paralyze the prey, and food moved into the waiting protist.

Other protozoa have flagella, or tails, that assist in feeding. The flagella whip back and forth creating a current that brings food to the protist. Still other protozoa are parasites, and get nutrients from a host organism, harming the host in the process.

Animal-like protists can be classified, or placed into groups, based on how they move. Some move with the aid of a flagellum (that’s the singular form of flagella.) Others have many small tail-like structures called cilia which they move back and forth to get around. Still others have what is known as a “fake foot” or pseudopodia. These protozoa have a part of their cell stretch out, which pulls the rest of the organism along. The amoeba is a common example of this type of protozoan. Finally, some protozoa don’t move at all.

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This type of slime Physarum Polycephalum is called the “many-headed slime”. This slime likes shady, cool, moist areas like you’d find in decaying logs and branches. Slime (or slime mold) is a word used to define protists that use spores to reproduce. (Note: Slime used to be classified as fungi.)

Real slime lives on microorganisms that inhabit dirt, grass, dead leaves, rotting logs, tropical fruits, air conditioners, gutters, classrooms and laboratories. Slime can grow to an area of several square meters.

Slime shows curious behaviors. It can follow a maze, reconnect itself when chopped in half, and predict whether an environment is good to live in or not. Scientists have battled with the ideas that at first glance, slime appears to be simply a “bag of amoebae”, but upon further study, seem to behave as if they have simple brains, like insects.

Slime can be either a plasmodial slime, a bag of cytoplasm containing thousands of individual nuclei, or a cellular slime which usually stays as individual unicellular protists until a chemical signal is released, causing the cells to gather and acts as one organism.
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Slime feeds by surrounding its food completely and secreting enzymes to digest it. If the slime dries out before its finished eating, it will form a hard tissue shell to protect the dormant slime until the weather turns wet again. The cool part is that the slime will continue searching for food once it hydrates and softens up. When slime can’t find food, it will begin the reproductive phase. Spores form from the mitosis phase and are spread by wind currents. Spores can remain formant for years if the conditions are unfavorable.