Fungi are a group of living things including mold, mushrooms, and yeast. They eat organic material - usually dead things, like fallen trees and old fruit - and reproduce by spreading spores. They can’t move on their own. Fungi are all over the world, but less visible to us than other lifeforms because they are often small, and much of their bodies exist underground or inside dead material.

Mushrooms eat dead stuff! They grow fine threads called mycelium into whatever dead thing they want to eat, and secrete digestive juices that break it down. Then they absorb the dissolved nutrients. It would be sort of like if you threw up onto a pizza to digest it, and then absorbed it through your arm. Yum!

Mushrooms (and most fungi) reproduce by spreading tiny spores by the wind. Spores are tiny, and if they land on a suitable spot (someplace with enough water and food), they’ll germinate, growing into a new mushroom.

Fungi can be found in almost any habitat, but typically they’re found on land, in soil or on plant material.

Fungi are typically detritivores, meaning they break down and eat dead stuff. When a tree falls in the forest, even if no one is around to hear it, it’s still going to be turned back into usable soil by fungi. Fungi are extremely important - they return nutrients to the soil to be used by new plants, and clear the ground of dead organic material like logs, sticks, leaves, and dead animals.

Fungi are extremely useful to humans for a variety of scientific uses (not to mention pizza uses), and one of the most important is in medicine. Penicillin, the world’s first antibiotic, is produced by a kind of mold. Another helpful fungus is yeast. Yeast has been used by humans for thousands of years to make anything that requires fermentation, from bread to wine to soy sauce!

The European white truffle is the world’s most expensive mushroom, going for over $2,000 per pound. They grow among the roots of trees in Italy, and are eaten as a delicacy, usually shaved raw over a dish.