Mushroom hunters seek new species and recognition

PORT ANGELES, United States - You cannot walk very far through a forest in this part of the United States without stumbling upon a mushroom, an eruption from a vast fungal kingdom that all life depends on, but about which people know very little.

Some are tall and thin with a helmet top, others are great flourishes of brain-like folds. Some seem like they should be sheltering fairies in a storybook.

Many look like they could be delicious in the hands of a skilled chef; others, decidedly not.

But the dozens of species that enthusiasts and experts collected on a recent morning represent just a tiny fraction of life that is neither flora nor fauna.

"Mushrooms are not plants," said Dr Amy Honan, who teaches mycology and fungal ecology at Oregon University. "Fungi are more closely related to animals than they are to plants."

Plants make their own food through photosynthesis, but mushrooms have to eat something else.

"They spit out different enzymes, so they break down their food outside of their body, and they slurp it up like a smoothie," Dr Honan said.

Of the at least 2.5 million species of fungus thought to exist on earth, scientists have described around 150,000 - 6 per cent - Dr Honan told AFP during a field trip near Port Angeles in Washington state.

Compared with what is known about plants and animals, that is practically nothing.