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Flat Earth Academy- Science

Biology: The Main Groups- the Fungus Kingdom

This is a work in progress... please bear with me, come back and watch it grow? Send constructive suggestions?

The humble fungus... e.g. a mushroom... might seem "boring", but without the fungi (plural of "fungus"), we'd have several problems.

One of the most immediate would be the fact that dead leaves, etc, would not decay away nearly as quickly as they do in the world as we know it.

Of course, we would be spared a few diseases, e.g. athlete's foot if the fungus kingdom was wiped out. But we would also be deprived of many important antibiotics, which are extracted from various fungi.

We also wouldn't have bread, beer, wine, spirits or many cheeses. There are many microscopic fungi, in addition to the things like mushrooms and mildew.

Generally speaking... although the slime molds are a dramatic exception... fungi don't move much. Remember that all living things achieve locomotion somehow, sometime in their lives... but the locomotion of a cheetah is always going to be more exciting than the locomotion of a pine tree or a fungus

Except for some of the microscopic fungi, they are usually made up of tiny "strands"... rather like something made from exceptionally thin pieces of spaghetti.... So... not very complicated, really.

But still Important in the Grand Scheme of Things.

The cell walls of fungi contain chitin... the same thing that makes a grasshopper "crunchy" (if you've tried one. I don't recommend them), as opposed to the cellulose of plant cells strong, the substance that makes celery crunchy. (Some plants... the woody plants... have an additional strengthening chemical: lignin)



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