Artists fungus

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Artists fungus

• By clarissa dagg

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Artists fungus

• its bright white underside was used as a canvas
  for painters which gave it the name artists
  fungus
• The upper portion of this fungus is either
  reddish brown or cocoa brown in color and may
  reach 45 cm (18 inches) across but most are in
  the 15-30 cm (6-12 inches) range. The lower
  surface when young and in rapid growth is a pure
  white which turns dark brown with age or injury.
  Its shape is like a fan whose handle grows from
  the trunk of the tree, or like a kidney. The body
  near the tree is the thickest and narrows down
  toward the outer edge, a wedge composed of layers
  representing each year's growth the oldest
  tissue is found on the top, the youngest below.
  By counting the layers like the rings of a tree,
  the age of the fungus can be determined. The
  average life span is five years but some old
  Ganoderma may reach ten years

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How artists fungi is spread

• Because of this massive output of spores, the
  species could conceivably germinate in every
  suitable spot in a forest. It is thus difficult
  to imagine that in the life of a given Ganoderma,
  only one of its spores will ultimately be
  successful in establishing a new colony. For
  successful colonization of a tree, the spore must
  fall within a large wound, such as a broken root
  or broken branch, and the wind-borne spores will
  rarely travel more than half a mile from its
  parent through a dense woods before depositing on
  some surface.
• After the spore nestles into a tree wound, the
  fungus germinates and begins to spread into the
  wood. The fungus can only move through the
  heartwood and outward through the sapwood if the
  wood in these areas is already partly rotted by
  other species of wood-rotting fungi or bacteria.
  After emerging through the bark, the Ganoderma
  produces the broadly attached, woody fruit body
  in which the spore tubes form.

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