The largest mushrooms and conks are the largest known individual

fruit bodies The sporocarp (also known as fruiting body, fruit body or fruitbody) of fungi is a multicellular structure on which spore-producing structures, such as basidia or asci, are borne. The fruitbody is part of the sexual phase of a fungal life c ...

. These are known as ''sporocarps'', or, more specifically, '' basidiocarps'' and ''

ascocarps An ascocarp, or ascoma (), is the fruiting body ( sporocarp) of an ascomycete phylum fungus. It consists of very tightly interwoven hyphae and millions of embedded asci, each of which typically contains four to eight ascospores. Ascocarps are mo ...

'' for the

Basidiomycota Basidiomycota () is one of two large divisions that, together with the Ascomycota, constitute the subkingdom Dikarya (often referred to as the "higher fungi") within the kingdom Fungi. Members are known as basidiomycetes. More specifically, Basi ...

and

Ascomycota Ascomycota is a phylum of the kingdom Fungi that, together with the Basidiomycota, forms the subkingdom Dikarya. Its members are commonly known as the sac fungi or ascomycetes. It is the largest phylum of Fungi, with over 64,000 species. The def ...

respectively. These fruit bodies have a wide variety of morphologies, ranging from the typical mushroom shape, to brackets (conks), puffballs, cup fungi, stinkhorns, crusts and corals. Many species of fungi, including yeasts,

mould A mold () or mould () is one of the structures certain fungi can form. The dust-like, colored appearance of molds is due to the formation of spores containing fungal secondary metabolites. The spores are the dispersal units of the fungi. No ...

s and the fungal component of

lichen A lichen ( , ) is a composite organism that arises from algae or cyanobacteria living among filaments of multiple fungi species in a mutualistic relationship.cankers A plant canker is a small area of dead tissue, which grows slowly, often over years. Some cankers are of only minor consequence, but others are ultimately lethal and therefore can have major economic implications for agriculture and horticultur ...

. Individual fruit bodies need not be individual biological organisms, and extremely large single organisms can be made up of a great many fruit bodies connected by networks of mycelia (including the "humongous fungus", a single specimen of '' Armillaria solidipes'') can cover a very large area. The largest identified fungal fruit body in the world is a specimen of '' Phellinus ellipsoideus'' (formerly ''Fomitiporia ellipsoidea''). The species was discovered in 2008 by Bao-Kai Cui and Yu-Cheng Dai in Fujian Province, China. In 2011, the two of them published details of extremely large fruit body of the species that they had found on Hainan Island. The specimen, which was 20 years old, was estimated to weigh between . This was markedly larger than the previously largest recorded fungal fruit body, a specimen of '' Rigidoporus ulmarius'' found in the United Kingdom that had a circumference of .

List

Unidentified specimens

Two large specimens are excluded from the list above. The first, a polypore photographed in 1903 at Yeerongpilly, Brisbane, Queensland, measured about in width by top to bottom, emerging from a tree about two thick. It was sturdy enough to support the weight of two average women. The second is more speculative. Somewhere in his world travels, writer/naturalist/explorer Ivan T. Sanderson encountered reports of a species of fungi which "weigh a ton, and upheave large trees". The earliest report appears to have been in the writings of James Brooke.Gardener's Chronicle Vol. 18 (second series)(1858) p. 400

References

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Fruit bodies The sporocarp (also known as fruiting body, fruit body or fruitbody) of fungi is a multicellular structure on which spore-producing structures, such as basidia or asci, are borne. The fruitbody is part of the sexual phase of a fungal life c ...

Lists of fungi

List

Unidentified specimens

See also

References