My name is Jackie and I have found the most exciting lab experience so far to be going out in the field to collect fungi. The days we spend out in the field are the most interesting to me because we are busy trying to find fungi, insects, or leaves and we get to be outside.
I really had no idea how much fungi there was in the surrounding area. The fungi that we found were shockingly large. It was a really good time to collect fungi because it was the perfect weather and perfect time of the season.
It was interesting to learn about different types of fungi and how to identify them. The class was able to collect a wide variety of fungi so we were able to work with many different examples. We had four types of mushrooms; bolete, puffball, cup, and gilled.
They were all very different looking and had different structures. The bolete mushroom had a puffy look to it and you couldn’t see gills. The puffball was the best one, we cut a piece out and the inside was yellow and brown and when you touched it the puffball would spring back and the outside was hard and white. The cup mushroom looked similar to a gilled mushroom but the gills weren’t as noticeable and it had a lip around it, and the gilled mushroom was the most common looking mushroom, it had gills on the underside and mine was yellow colored on the top.
After we collected the four types of mushrooms we had to draw and label all the parts for each one. We also grew bread mold and drew what we saw when we studied a piece of bread mold under a microscope. The last drawing we did was a drawing of a commercial mushroom. We had to look at two different views of the basidium, which are spores produced externally and are found on the gills of the mushroom, from the mushroom. It was harder to find some of the parts in the commercial mushroom than in the mushrooms we collected ourselves.
Overall I thought the fungi collecting and lab was the most entertaining so far. I knew some information about mushrooms but not a lot so it was neat to learn some new things about them. I thought all mushrooms looked alike until this lab experience.
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