Mushroom Seeds
by Martha Daniels
photography by Cliff White

If you were told to grow mushrooms, you would probably start by planting seeds, right? Well, almost.

Mushrooms aren't exactly plants like the marigolds in your garden or the big oak tree in your backyard. Instead, they're part of a fungus that grows underground. The mushrooms we see above ground are just the fruit with seeds.

If you've ever been digging in rich soil and found white stringy foam, that's mycelium. It grows in soil or dead wood, living off decaying plants. The strands weave their way into dead leaves and wood, breaking them apart to make soil. Thanks in part to the mycelium, all kinds of plants can grow in the soil and use the rich nutrients.

When the time of year comes for mycelium to grow seeds, it produces a mushroom above the ground. The mushroom is the fruit that spreads the seeds.

Mushroom seeds aren't ordinary seeds, like beans or peas. In the cap or top of a mushroom, you'll find lots of holes or paper-thin gills. In the gills are millions of tiny seeds that look like dust.

When the mushroom ripens, the seeds-or spores-catch a ride on a breeze. You can't see the spores flying by, but sometimes they look like a puff of smoke if you bump a ripe mushroom. When a spore lands in the right place, it takes hold in the soil and becomes a new mycelium.

Step by Step Spore Print

Supply List

• fresh mushroom caps with flat bottoms. You can find mushrooms growing near fallen logs, under leaf litter near compost piles-many places in your yard or woods.
• dark and light construction paper
• bowls big enough to cover the caps
• can of hair spray

Make a Print

Remove the mushroom stem and place the cap with the gills toward the construction paper. Use different colors of paper to make the spores appear. For mushrooms with brown, gray or black gills, try using white or yellow paper. If gills are white, use green, red or black paper.

Put a bowl or glass over the cap so the spores fall on the paper and aren't blown away.

The next day, carefully lift the bowl off the paper and gently remove the mushroom. You'll find a pattern much the same as the gills in the cap.

To make the spores stick to the paper, hold the hair spray can a foot away from the paper and spray straight out into the air above the paper so that the spray falls gently on the print. Don't hold the can too close to the paper or you'll blow the spores away. Spray it again a few times to secure your print well.

Remember, some mushrooms are poisonous to eat so be sure to wash your hands after touching wild mushrooms.

Martha Daniels, an editor and designer for the Conservation Department, has been a mushroom fan all her life, especially cheering on her favorite, the morels.