North America Mushrooms

Mushrooms, what are they? they are the fruiting body of the mycelium that grows under the ground surface, here is where it gets all its nutrients to reproduce.  Not all mycorrhizal fungi produce mushrooms as part of their reproductive strategies, but many basidiomycete fungi do. The mycelium is usually the part of the fungi that most people don't see, it is composed of hyphae, which are "chains" of fungal cells growing in a web-like design, throughout the forest floors. Fungi including those which produce mushrooms are not plants, they are related to molds, mildews, rusts, and yeast, they are in the classification of the Fungi Kingdom. 

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Many fungi grow on decaying, decomposing dead organic matter or on living material, such as leaves, wood chips, logs, and on dead or living trees. Other fungi, including some mushrooms, have a different role: they infect and kill things—insects, trees, even people (particularly those with weakened immune systems)—for a living. Fungi cause most diseases of insects, as well as many diseases of trees and other plants… not to mention such common maladies as toenail fungus, yeast infections, and "ringworm."

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Ectomycorrhizal fungi are typically found living in a symbiosis with certain types of trees. In North America, these include especially certain trees in four major tree families: Pine (including pine, hemlock, fir, spruce, and larch [tamarack]); Beech (including beech, oak, and chestnut); Birch; and Willow (including willow, aspen, poplar, and cottonwood). Other kinds of mycorrhizal fungi that don't produce mushrooms (most notably the endomycorrhizal) are more typically associated with other kinds of trees and plants.

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Fungi reproduce by releasing spores through the fruiting body of the mushroom. (Some fungi produce spores differently, without producing a visible structure that could be called a mushroom.) The "body" of the fungus is called the mycelium. It is a tangled network of microscopically-thin filaments called hyphae, and it is typically hidden—in the humus on the forest floor, within decomposing wood, wrapped around the rootlets of a green plant. 

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