The kingdom of mushrooms is numerous and diverse . According to various experts, the number of species of these organisms ranges from 100 thousand to one and a half million. And that’s not all, discovered by science! By the way, it is called mycology and is one of the branches of botany, because for a long time scientists ranked mushrooms as plants. But this turned out to be not quite so. Mushrooms have properties and characteristics characteristic of both plants and animals, which can combine them with both. That is why botanists have isolated them into a separate kingdom in nature.
Classification
According to the most important classification, mushrooms are divided into higher and lower. Higher fungi include multicellular and some unicellular organisms (for example, yeast, which, according to the conclusion of microbiologists, is secondarily unicellular). But today it will not be about them. The class of lower fungi (more precisely, there are several of them: according to various classifications, from three to six) includes all classes of fungi, except ascomycetes, basidiomycetes, and deuteromycetes. And there are many representatives, very different from each other in appearance and function.
Representatives of lower mushrooms
What is their main characteristic feature around which they can be united according to some criteria? They are characterized by a vegetative body - mycelium, which does not have partitions, unicellular structure. Sometimes such fungi do not form hyphae at all, and instead a plasmodium arises: a cytoplasm with many nuclei. They have less than perfect sexual reproduction (in contrast to the higher ones, capable of reproduction by asexual). According to some classifications, lower fungi include: chitridiomycetes, oomycetes, zygomycetes. Other units are also possible.
The Cursed Tribe
Lower mushrooms also include beneficial ones, but many of them are harmful. Fungi are the cause of many diseases of both humans and animals. They affect the skin, hair, eyes and respiratory system. Some provoke food poisoning and even death. About 200 species of mushrooms affect books and other paper products. Some eat cereals, causing enormous damage to agriculture and human health. Lower mushrooms include those that hit wooden houses and wooden railway sleepers, and those that cause metal corrosion. No wonder the French botanist Weyang called these representatives a "damned tribe." He even believed that the lower mushrooms serve in order to specifically violate the existing harmony of the rest of nature.
White mold (or mucor)
This bright representative of the lower mushrooms can often appear on bread, flour, rolls and vegetables. There we sometimes observe it in the form of a whitish fluffy coating, which blackens over time. The mycelium itself - the mycelium of mucor - has a composition of threads, whitish and colorless (hence the popular name of the lower fungus). Mycelium is one overgrown cell with many nuclei located in the cytoplasm. The method of propagation of mucor is a spore. Some of the mycelium filaments expand at the tips, forming black heads (with all this remaining only one cell). Spores form on them, ripening and crumbling. Then they are carried by the wind. Once in a favorable environment, white mold spores form a new mycelium. Interestingly, mucor only harms humans, causing food spoilage. And in nature, it plays a rather positive role: it helps to decompose the remains of dead organisms.
Other pests "from the lower"
Some other harmful organisms also belong to lower fungi. Phytophthora affects potatoes and tomatoes, causing blackening of tops and tubers. Synchitrium stimulates cancer of potato tubers. Cabbage olpidium, popularly called the "black leg", causes blackening of the roots and death of the plant. A pathogenic fungus imported from America, plasmopara viticola, damages European vineyards.