Kingdom Fungi
Phylum Basidiomycota
General Characteristics
- Phylum Basidiomycota includes mushrooms, toadstools, puffballs, jelly fungi, rusts, smuts, and shelf fungi
- Called "club fungi" after the shape of the Basidium - the reproductive structure looks like the club suit in playing cards
- Many hallucinogenic, deadly, others safe and edible
- Complex life cycles
- Karyogamy = the fusion of two nuclei in the basidium, making an n+n cell into a 2n cell
- The basidium is just reproductive - feeding takes place in the mycelium, the mesh of hyphae
- Basidium = Club structure inside the gills of the mushroom top, makes basidiospores
- Basidiocarp = Mushroom top
- Basidiospore = Spore produced by basidium
- Note that the names of many parts of the different Fungi refer to which phylum they are classified under. Anything beginning with "Basidi- "is likely in Basidiomycota
- Chitin cell walls
_ Coprinus section through basidiocarp
- The main structure is the basidiocarp, the reproductive "mushroom" part of a basidiomcycete that makes spores and spreads them to the wind
- The gills are flaps on the underside of the basidiocarp the increase the surface area for the production of basidiospores
- The stalk is the central stem of the basidiocarp
- The spores are called basidiospores among basidiomycetes
- "Ink cap" Mushroom