The Hooded Marvel

Maybe it's just as well for the mushroom that it prefers shady spots--sunlight wouldn't be of much use to it anyway.

In most plants, sunlight reacts with chlorophyll to produce its food (starch) through photosynthesis, during which oxygen is manufactured as well. The mushroom couldn't care less about sunlight, because it has no chlorophyll in it at all. Instead, fungi such as mushrooms feed on rotted vegetation and other organic material (such as manure and chemically treated straw, in the case of the commercially grown product). In the wild, they must subsist on less exotic fare, such as dead litter and roots on the forest floor.

Because they cannot manufacture their food in place as leaves do, they continually spread outward from the site of their original planting (or "spawning"), consuming decomposing vegetable matter as they go. Actually, threadlike filaments called mycelia are the spreading vegetative portion of the fungus, growing entirely underground, and the mushrooms are the fruiting bodies. While green plants supply the bulk of oxygen to our atmosphere, forest fungi such as mushrooms nurture our soil by leaving behind a residue of decomposed organic remains enriched in nitrogen and phosphorous.

As the mycelia spread outward from a common center, they often result in nearly perfect circular patterns of growing mushrooms, known in folklore as "fairy circles." Presumably, in medieval times they served as playgrounds for fairies on moonlit nights. The mysterious overnight appearance of mushroom clumps may have added to the legend. If nothing else, mushrooms are "sudden," and there are those who claim that they can be heard growing if one puts his ear to the ground.

Fairy circles can often be seen on freshly mowed lawns, even though no mushrooms appear at the surface. They are identified by rings in the grass which mark the fertile outer perimeter of the growing circle. Fairy rings can grow to impressive dimensions. Aerial photos have revealed rings measuring 200 yards in diameter that are thought to be hundreds of years old.