"Kay Easton" wrote in message
...

Mycelial strands when they meet sometimes join and form fruit bodies.

I this asexual or sexual reproduction, or is the concept not relevant?
It's a long time ago that I learnt about fungi, if indeed I ever did!

In the mushrooms and their ilk (most of which are basidiomycetes) what you
have is single mating type mycelium and it'll be haploid (one set of
chromosomes), growing slowly through the substrate. If it finds another
compatible mating type then it can do the whole sexual thing, form a proper
diploid (two sets of chromosomes) mycelium, and produce fruiting bodies. So
if, for example, you took oyster mushroom spores and grew them up, you'd
have four different mating types of fluffy mycelium which when properly
crossed could grow way more rapidly and produce more oyster mushrooms, which
release more spores. So a mushroom isn't quite like a fruit (which will
normally contain seed with enough info to produce a new, adult organism) but
it's more akin to being a fruit than it is to being a whole plant or root;
it's only the part of the organism that's being used to spread genes.

That's what I thought - but it was someone else that brought truffles
into the argument!!

Sorry. That was my fault. Not that truffles are plants, but I'd hate to have
to argue with a lawyer that they're not analogous to roots (without having
to concede the point that neither are corms or tubers, which to my mind
would be silly).