Enjoy the magical mushroom kingdom!

Mushrooms, toadstools, mould or yeasts; whatever you call them, we couldn’t live without them. Claire Hanley-Öpik considers the fascinating world of fungi.

AT THIS TIME OF YEAR, mushrooms and toadstools are sprouting on the ground and trees. These are the fruiting bodies of fungi – like a flower is to a plant. They help fungi to reproduce, by distributing millions of microscopic spores into the air, which grow into new fungi…