January EcoQuest

Beginning the year with Basidiomycota

Basidiomycota is a large, diverse class of fungi that includes more than 31,000 known living species that includes mushrooms, puffballs, stinkhorns, bracket fungi and other polypores, jelly fungi, boletes, chanterelles, earth stars, smuts, bunts, rusts, and some yeasts. Basidiomycetes are also known as club fungi, due to their club-shaped spore-producing organs, called basidia. It is distinguished from other classes of fungi (Chytridiomycota [chytrids], Zygomycota [bread molds], Ascomycota [yeasts and sac fungi]), by several characteristics detailed HERE.

In NYC, there are over 700 basidiomycete species with at least one research grade observation on iNaturalist. Check under logs, leaf litter, and other decaying organic matter to see how many you can find!