The Secret Friend of Trees

I collected a few forest mushrooms in the forest garden this afternoon. 

Nothing edible here. I do not actually like eating mushrooms, though I have studied them in college, grown them, and collected them. They’re interesting. 

The mushroom itself is the water-driven fruiting body of often very large colonies of mycelium unseen in the soil or in rotting wood or leaf litter. Most mushrooms fruit in the fall when it just begins to get wetter and cooler, though there are some important ones that fruit in the Spring, and even the Summer. Many mushrooms are rhizomorphic (root loving), and many trees and bushes get a large portion of their minerals and even water from their symbiotic fungal friends. In exchange, the tree feeds the fungi with sugars and carbohydrates, created through photosynthesis, which the fungi cannot produce on its own.