As for puffballs, the fruiting body was opened to view the number of peridium layers, presence or absence of mucilage sheath and colour of the gliba. Thin sections of gliba, peridium were mounted in lactophenol after staining the section in cotton blue. Ascomycetes members were represented by 4 genera belonging to 4 families. The remaining 64 genera belonged to Basidiomycetes, with mushrooms constituting 38 of them from 12 families, Gastromycetes constituting 13 genera from 10 families and polypores constituting another 13 genera from 6 families. Table 1 illustrates that extensive tree growth, both wild and planted such as around University, harboured most of these while forests along hills harbored about three fourth.
Forests exclusively harbour just three genera.
This can be in part attributed to more intensive studies around University campus. While, these numbers might change after intensive sampling elsewhere, especially in hill forests, the importance of urban plantations in hosting significant fungal diversity will remain as evident. Commonest genera include Merasmius, Hygrocybe, Auricularia, Hexagonia etc. This high fungal diversity around the University campus can be attributed to old and extensive tree growth, which share most taxa with forests, given wide dispersal ability of fungi. In addition, some fungi favour such plantations, such as Itajahya associated only with Dalbergia melanoxylon , most extensively planted tree in the University.