10knotes:

gooomoon:

A fairy ring is a naturally occurring ring of mushrooms. They are also known as pixie’s rings, faerie circles, or elf circles. The English believed that fairy rings were where fairies came to dance and celebrate, the mushrooms of the rings were used as stools for the fairies to recuperate during the evenings festivities.

When I was young I spent a lot of time in Ireland because my parents would always want to go back to their homes often. My mum used to tell me about faerie circles and she said that if you disturbed the ring by touching it, all the magic creatures would come and get you. I actually saw one of these rings for myself and was terrified the elves would come for me.

HANK HAS TO SCIENCE ON THIS

When the spore of some kinds of mushroom hits the ground to begin its life cycle, it will radiate out from the point of genesis with tiny little threads called mycelium which are actually the physical body of the fungus. The mycelium stretches throughout the soil, feeding by decomposing matter and, if there’s good food and consistent soil structure in every direction, it will radiate out in a nearly perfect circle. Eventually, when the center of the ring runs out of nutrients, the fungus goes into it’s spore production phase, and sends up “mushrooms” or the fruiting bodies of the fungus. These are all produced at the same time around the edge of the mycelium, taking all of the nutrients from the mycelium to produce these reproductive spore factories.

So each mushroom is not an individual organism, but rather the fruit of a sort of sub-surface fungal tree.

To me, this is even cooler than elves and fairies.

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