280 days of Urbpandemonium #87

[urbpan]

Sometimes mushrooms bear a slight resemblance to marine organisms. Sometimes they holy crap look exactly like coral. Resemblance to coral comes from convergent evolution: both coral organisms and this mushroom have adapted to maximize surface area using as little underlying structure as possible. With coral, the living polyps are on the surface of a branchlike skeleton; with Artomyces pyxidatus*, cells that can produce spores are on the surface of sterile fungal tissue. This is a fairly common fungus that feeds on dead wood in forests, helping make them a little more magical and paradoxical, the way we like them.



* "Bread mushroom gift box"

Comments

[buboniclou.livejournal.com]

*Artful pustuled fungus?

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Oh whoops I forgot to put the translation. It actually makes less sense than that.

[urb-banal.livejournal.com]

so cool

[buboniclou.livejournal.com]

LOL! That is a pretty ridiculous nomenclature.