Introduction Kingdom Fungi constitutes amongst the most diverse group of organisms, that also exhibit myriad enigmatic shapes, caps and parasols, balls and crumples sheets, layered plats and overlapping shingles, muted and gaudy. These appear suddenly amongst the fallen leaves, on trees or encrusting dead wood, just after the first shower of the monsoon. Despite their popularity, not many people know mushrooms as being fruiting, rather spore producing bodies of some fungi.
Mushrooms possess pigments of various colours viz.
However, mushroom lack chlorophyll unlike plants and therefore cannot manufacture their own food from solar energy. They absorb their nourishment, primarily carbohydrates, directly from dead or alive plants and animals and known as saprophytes. Fine cottony threads called hyphae that are networked in to a cobweb, termed mycelium facilitate the absorption. This vegetative part of the fungus lies beneath the soil, lasting from months to millennia, depending on resource supply etc. Under suitable environment, myceliu produces mushrooms i.e. sporophores annually that shade the spores that are wind dispersed and ultimately generate mycelium.