The Joy of Fungus: Our Mushroom Study

We haven't had much of a chance to study mushrooms up close in the last few weeks but we did over our summer break. Our trip to Oregon gave us plenty to look at and identify. Identifying mushrooms is really a difficult task.


As part of our biology course, we studied the mushroom's life cycle and my boys made nature journal entries using some of the photos we had collected of mushrooms in our area.

"Fungi, as a whole, are a great boon to the world. Without them our forests would be choked out with dead wood. Decay is simply the process by which fungi and other organisms break down dead material, so that the major part of it returns to the air in gaseous form, and the remainder, now mostly humus, mingles with the soil." Handbook of Nature Study, page 715

I think if that is the only thing we learn about fungus/mushrooms from our study we will have accomplished a greater understanding of how the forest ecosystem works. There is great beauty in these living things and a wonderful purpose to their creation.

Our mushroom season will soon be upon us and we will be out and enjoying a whole array of fungus to observe. We will be using the diagram on page 717 to categorize the mushrooms we see as we go along. I am totally inspired by Casey's study: Extraordinary World: Mushrooms.

Here is a set of our mushroom photos from the last year that I gathered on Flickr if you would like to see what we have in our area of California: Mushrooms

Barb-Harmony Art Mom