Paragraph on “What are fungi?” complete paragraph for Class 9, Class 10, Class 11 and Class 12
What are fungi?
Fungi are plants, but they do not have the pigment called chlorophyll which makes the leaves, and often the stems, of other plants look green. Instead, fungi usually appear brown, red, gold or violet, like many of those shown here Green plants use chlorophyll to trap the energy which comes from sunlight, and then use this energy to combine water from the soil and a gas in the air called carbon dioxide, to manufacture food for themselves. Because fungi do not have chlorophyll , they must obtain their food as animals do, in other words, readymade. To do this, most fungi live on dead or decaying plant and animal remains and use these remains as food. Fungi which do this are called saprophytes. Other fungi feed on living plants and animals, and they are called parasites, some fungi can live on either dead or living tissue.
There are many different kinds of fungi the world over; the ‘mould’ that we often see on old bread is really a fungus. Athlete’s foot which some people suffer from is caused by a fungus, and of course the familiar mushrooms and toadstools that we often see in woods and fields are part of a fungus, the part called a fruiting body. Mushroomed and toadstools usually appear in late summer and early autumn. For most of the year the fungus exists underground, or hidden among dead tree trunks, as a mass of thin, thread like tubes called mycelium. As the weather becomes damper, some of the threads of the mycelium join together and sprout upwards, forming the fruiting body.