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Garden Toolkit and curriculum provided by Back to the Roots® . Visit backtotheroots.com/curriculum to download all unit materials and view source listings.
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Chapter 3: How do mushrooms grow?
A full grown mushroom has a cap to protect the place where the spores are made. Spores are the
reproductive units of mushrooms (similar to seeds in plants).
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Under the cap we find the gills, which are the home to the spore producing structures called basidia,
and there are lots of them!
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The spores are formed in a basidium (imagine it like a cannon-ball factory where the spores get ready
to fire). From the basidium the spores shoot out into the world. Millions of spores are released from
the basidiums on the gills. They can wait for a long time until conditions are right, but eventually they
need water, oxygen, and a food source to be able to grow (just like you!).
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When they find the right conditions the spores can begin to grow one cell at a time as hypha.
(Remember the train cars with a nucleus like a passenger inside from Chapter 1?) In each spore there
is only half of the information needed to produce a new mushroom, but it can still grow more hyphae
with only one gender of nucleus inside. The hyphae are male or female threads which move through
the soil looking for a mate. When they find one, they combine and become mycelium!
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The mycelium branches out in search of food. The nuclei move throughout the network and
communicate to keep the mycelium moving in the right direction and using the right enzymes to
break down food in the most efficient way.
Understanding Mushroom Growth
Mushrooms are mysterious creatures and it can be tricky to see how they grow, mostly because they spend
the majority of their life below ground as a network of hyphae (see Chapter 2 if you need a refresher). To
really understand what’s happening as mushrooms grow, we need to take a closer look. Read each step of
the growth cycle below while looking at the diagram on Page 7. Can you label each part of the picture
with the numbered steps below?
MUSHROOM
FARM
organic
Cap
ANATOMY OF A MUSHROOM
Stalk
Substrate
(inside box)
Gills
Basidia
Gill
Spores
Hyphae
Basidium
Mycelium
Spores