280 days of Urbpandemonium #87

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"