Saturday, September 30th (Melzar Hatch Preserve)
This Saturday, I visited some family, so I decided to explore some of the natural environment in my hometown. It was a cloudy and cool day after rain, but we still went for a walk at Melzar Hatch Preserve.
I found a lot of fungi, maybe since there's been so much rain this year. With most of them, I found them near dead or rotting plants, so it was obvious that these fungi are saprobes, surviving off nutrients from decomposing organic material. It was really interesting to see the variety in shapes and sizes. Some of them were the traditional type that you tend to think of when you think of mushrooms, while some looked more like coral or wood; additionally, some were pretty large, while others were much smaller. I guess it’s an example of the biodiversity present in one single kingdom, fungi.
It’s strange to think that we share a lot of DNA with something that appears so different from us; after all, both humans and fungi are eukaryotes, contain mitochondria and other organelles, and are heterotrophs. It shows that despite superficial differences, we’re actually quite similar. This was a fun experience, to get a closer look at a type of organisms I usually ignore!
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