Fungi Archive

Physcia

General structure Physcia is foliose lichen. Physcia is divided into four regions internally. These regions are: 1. Upper cortex: It is present at the upper regions. It is composed of closely packed hyphae. Spaces are absent between them. If spaces are …

Agaricus

This is a large genus of fungi often synonymized with the term ‘mushrooms’, distributed mainly in temperate regions. Agaricus spp. are saprotrophs, growing in pastures and woodland litter. The mycelium is perennial and some species and some species, e.g. A. arvensis …

Yeast Bread-making

The principle behind the leavening of bread dough by baker’s yeast is the same as in brewing, i.e. the anaerobic metabolism of glucose and other reducing sugars via pyruvic acid into ethanol and CO2. The difference is that the released …

Ascomycota Fruit Bodies

Types of fruit body: There are number of fruit bodies in Ascomycota.  In yeasts and related fungi the asci are not enclosed by hyphae, but in most ascomycetes they are surrounded by hyphae to form an ascocarp or ascoma. An old term for …

Pythium

Species of Pythium grow in water and soil as saprotrophs, but under suitable conditions, e.g. where seedlings are grown crowded together in poorly drained soil, they can become parasitic, causing diseases such as pre-emergence killing, damping off and foot rot. …

Zygomycetes Mucorales

In most members of the Mucorales, numerous spores are contained in globose sporangia borne at the tips of aerial sporangiophores. Within the sporangium the spores may surround a central core or columella, although in some species the columella is greatly …

Taxonomy of fungi

Taxonomy is the science of classification, i.e. the ‘assigning of objects to defined categories’. Classification has three main functions: it provides a framework of recognizable features by which an organism under examination can be identified; it is an attempt to …

Cleavage of ascospores

In many ascomycetes, studies of the fine structure of asci during cleavage of the ascospores have shown that a system of double membranes continuous with the endoplasmic reticulum extends from the envelope of the diploid fusion nucleus. The double membrane …

Ascus development in Ascomycota

In yeasts and related fungi, the ascus arises directly from a single cell, but in most other ascomycetes it develops from a specialized hypha, the ascogenous hypha, which in turn develops from an ascogonium.  Ascogenous hypha The ascogenous hypha of …

Dolipore septum

The transverse septa which divide both monokaryotic and dikaryotic hyphae into segments are incomplete; they contain a central pore which permits cytoplasmic continuity between adjacent segments. The septal pore is surrounded by a barrel-shaped flange of thickened wall material. Such …