FUNGI

The biology class went on a fungus walk near the school on last friday. The purpose of the trip was to see various fungus with our eyes and find out where the fungus can be found. I wish I could go, and see variety of fungus that are near our school but I wasn't able to go with the class. However, I've been learning about fungus for the last week and found out a lot of information about fungus. Fungi are classified according to their methods of reproduction and their basic structure, and most people would think of fungi as plants because the fungi do look like plants, but they are in a different kingdom seperate from plants. Fungus are  eukaryotic heterotrphs which mean that they have cells that have nucleus and depend on other organisms for food.
Through the lessons from this past week, I got to know the things that fungi have which make them unique and distinct. One of them is that their method of obtaining food is very important to the nature. They absorb food through their cell walls and cell membranes, then enzymes would break down leaves, fruits, and many other dead organisms into simple molecules which diffuse across the cell walls and membranes. The powerful digestive enzymes that they produce help to recycle nutrients and essential chemicals by breaking down dead organisms. I've been thinking of fungi just as dowdy plants that are everywhere, but fungi have been playing an important role in nature. There are several types of fungi which are protist-like fungi, common molds, sac fungi, club fungi and imperfect fungi. Some of them are not always beneficial to us and could harm us but there are a lot of benefits that we get from them such as yeast which we often use for baking and making wines and nutritious mushrooms which we enjoy eating. Like this, there are a lot of interesting things that we can learn about fungi, and it had been a fun class this past week.

Below are some of the fungus