Numerous and diverse kingdom of mushrooms.According to different experts, the number of species of these organisms ranges from 100 thousand to one and a half million. And that's not all, discovered by science! It, by the way, bears the name of mycology and is one of the sections of botany, because for a long time scientists have been counting mushrooms to plants. But it was not quite so. Mushrooms have properties and signs characteristic of both plants and animals, which can combine them with those and with others. That is why botanists have isolated them in a separate kingdom in nature.
According to the most important classification of mushroomsare subdivided into higher and lower. Higher mushrooms include multicellular and some unicellular organisms (for example, yeasts, which are secondarily unicellular by microbiologists' conclusion). But today it will not be about them. The class of lower fungi (more precisely, there are several of them: according to various classifications - from three to six) includes all classes of fungi, except Ascomycetes, Basidiomycetes and deuteromycetes. And there are many representatives, very different from each other in appearance and functions.
What is their main characteristic,around which they can be combined on some grounds? They are characterized by a vegetative body - a mycelium that does not have partitions, a unicellular structure. Sometimes such fungi do not form hyphae, but instead plasmodium occurs: cytoplasm with many nuclei. They have less perfect sexual reproduction (unlike higher ones, able to reproduce themselves and in an unprotected way). According to some classifications, the lower fungi include: chitridiomycetes, oomycetes, zygomycetes. Other units are also possible.
To the lower fungi are useful, but manyof them are harmful. Fungi - the cause of many diseases, both humans and animals. They affect the skin, hair, eyes and respiratory system. Some provoke food poisoning and even death. About 200 kinds of mushrooms hit books and other paper products. Some eat cereals, causing huge damage to agriculture and human health. The lower fungi include those that affect wooden houses and railway wooden sleepers, and those that cause corrosion of the metal. No wonder the French botanist Vein called these representatives "cursed tribe." He even believed that the lower mushrooms serve to specifically violate the existing harmony of the rest of nature.
This bright representative of lower mushrooms is oftencan appear on bread, flour, buns and vegetables. There we sometimes see it in the form of a whitish fuzzy plaque, which eventually turns black. The mycelium itself - the mycelium of mukora - has a composition of threads, whitish and colorless (hence the popular name of the lower fungus). Mycelium is one overgrown cell with many nuclei in the cytoplasm. The method of reproduction of mukora is sporic. Some of the threads of mycelium expand on the tips, forming black heads (for all while remaining just a cage). On them, and spores are formed, ripening and crumbling. Then they are carried by the wind. Getting into a favorable environment, spores of white mold form a new mycelium. It is interesting that mucor only harms a person, causing food spoilage. And in nature it plays a rather positive role: it helps to decompose the remains of dead organisms.
The lower fungi include some othersharmful organisms. Phytophthora affects potatoes and tomatoes, causing blackening of the tops and tubers. Synchrtrium stimulates the cancer of potato tubers. Olpidium cabbage, called in the people "black leg", causes the blackening of the roots and the death of the plant. A pathogenic fungus, imported from America, plasmaparatic viticola, damages the vineyards of Europe.
