Life Cycle of Mushrooms

The life cycle of the mushrooms begins with the fungus, some are like the buttons of a cloth, and some are irregular depending upon the species of a mushroom. Generally a typical mushroom can be divides into three parts. Cap, gills and stipe.

 

The topmost part of it which is in the shape of an umbrella is called as cap. Underneath the cap there are lots of thread like structures which has a huge amount of spores, commonly a white colour, and this part is called gills, also a mail part for the life cycle process. Below it is a long trunk which is called stalk or stipe. Some of the mushrooms may have a ring like structure at the bottom known as cup, from where a lots of mycelium grows.

         After the spores located at the gills of a mushroom become matured, it automatically comes outside and once it gets the suitable environment, a new mushrooms germinates. The mushroom seeds are manufactured from these spores.

         During the collection of spores we should take a matured mushroom, we can ignore the  below, i.e the stem, we should consider only the cap of it. Now the gills present in it should be kept in a white paper for few days. After it is removed , we can find the spore prints attached in the paper. The thing to be noted: the spore prints depends upon the species of the mushrooms.

         Now those spore prints converts into small thread like structures called the mycelium, after few days a small white balls appears over it which is called primordia. These primordia after they get the suitable conditions like air, water, temperature etc. they gets converted into a mushroom after few days depending upon the species of the mushrooms. And hence finishes its life cycle giving a continuity to the spores. The characteristics of a mushroom like shape, colour, odour, etc. varies from species to species. The morphological characteristics also depends upon the species like the cap of an oyster mushroom is flattened rather than that of a button mushroom is convex. In the button mushroom the gills in the initial stage is pink in colour but later on it converts into dark brown colour. The stem is short and round and the colour of a matured mushroom is white.

         Rather in an oyster mushroom the cap is flat, with grey in colour and the gills are creamy. And hence the morphology depends upon the type of a mushroom.

The taxonomists has classified mushroom as:

Class:       Basidiomytes

Order:       Agaricales

Family:     Agaricaceae

genus:       Agaricus

species:    Bisporus