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Project Noah Nature School
Schizophyllum commune
The cap is shell-shaped, with the tissue concentrated at the point of attachment, resembling a stem. It is often wavy and lobed, with a rigid margin when old. It is tough, felty and hairy, and slippery when moist. It is greyish white and up to 4 cm in diameter. The gills are pale reddish or grey, very narrow with a longitudinal split edge which becomes inrolled when wet; the only knows fungus with spit gills that are capable of retracting by movement. It is found predominantly from autumn to spring on dead wood, in coniferous and deciduous forest.
It is the world's most widely distributed mushroom, occurring on every continent except Antarctica
Schizophyllum commune is a very common, inedible species of mushroom in the genus Schizophyllum. The gills, which produce basidiospores on their surface split when the mushroom dries out, earning this mushroom the common name Split Gill. It has more than 28,000 sexes. ( http://www.independent.co.uk/news/scient... ) ( http://botit.botany.wisc.edu/toms_fungi/... ) --It is common in rotting wood, but can also cause disease in humans.
Spotted on Oct 9, 2011
Submitted on Oct 11, 2011
10 Comments
haha, thanks, but i will not stop !!! =)
I suspect who ever it was that researched it would make a fascinating dinner party guest - or maybe not! Seriously though it is great to have all these amazing facts at our fingertips. I've never given much thought to fungi & PN has opened up a whole new world to me!
You need to stop posting such interesting spottings if you want to slow down the amount of emails you get! :)
thanks karenL, (couldn't you look before 10 min. i'm working through the ïnbox-comments, had it just cleared for this one --- NOO, BAD JOKE =) , please go on look at all my spottings !! thats a weird fungi, or isn't it ?? 28.000 -36.000 sexes, oh man, who researched something like that ?!!!!
Great shot Alex, & great info!
thanks all of you!
wow...great one, Alex - nice shots.
Spectacular..
Thanks! Amazing!
( http://www.independent.co.uk/news/scient... ) ( http://botit.botany.wisc.edu/toms_fungi/... )
-> IF HUMANS were mushrooms, finding a date would be much easier. Whereas we muddle by with just two sexes, the fungi have 36,000, all of which can mate with each other, in a mysterious process involving underground fronds. the "schizoplhyllum commune" can have sex with almost every companion it meets - decided by its own "sex gene" - any harmful mitochondrial mutations are restricted to the parent carrying them, and cannot easily spread through the population. This "Berlin Wall" strategy is used by many lower species that have multiple sexes, including ciliate bacteria ( !?-why-fungi-have-36000-sexes ) ->Thus any of the offspring would be compatible with only 1/4 of its siblings, a significant improvement over the single locus system. In reality there are usually more than two alleles at any one locus. Each individual is compatible with any individual that is different at both loci. In Schizophyllum commune there are more than 300 alleles at the A locus and more than 90 known for the B locus. Thus there are more than 28,000 different combinations of A and B, or 28,000 different sexes! Each individual is compatible with 27,997 of the others in the worldwide population (99.98% outbreeding) compared with being compatible with only 1/4 of its siblings. Thus the enormous number of sexes in fungi is meant to encourage non-sibling mating and non-relative mating, which ensures genetic diversity in the population. This seems to have worked quite well in the widely distributed Schizophyllum. ( !?-botit.botany). ----> I wouldn't explain it better or even right, i think,i understood that. hope it will be helpful with your questions.
This is a gorgeous photograph; nature as artist! But what does "It has more than 28,000 sexes" mean??