[ELI5] How do mushrooms grow from spores into what they are?

Question

Where do those spores come from and how do they just grow like that without seeds and retain that shape. I’m confused.

In: Biology

Answer 1

Spores are “mushroom seeds”. The mushroom produces them, just like plants produce seeds. The part of that we think of as mushrooms is actually just the “fruit” of the larger fungus…most of the fungus is something called mycelium, the mushroom just grows to produce and release spores. When you look on the underside of mushrooms and see the dark “fins”, called gills, that’s where the spores come from.

They grow basically the same way that other kinds of spores do…the shape of the spore doesn’t have anything to do with the shape of the plant, any more than a egg looks like a chicken.