Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
She senses you walking through her hair. In delight, she shakes her tangled mane
in the wind.
Fungi and Land Plants
Fungi specialise in interconnecting other living entities, and even other living kingdoms.
They have invented the most important nutrient transport system on the planet—the my-
corrhizas—which control underground nutrient flows in ecological communities, and
also determine which plant species can live in them. Most land plants are utterly depend-
ent on mycorrhizas; only four groups living in water-logged nutrient rich habitats don't
form associations with them: campions, spinaches, mustards and sedges.
Figure 40: Mycelial cords (rhizomorphs) of
Tricholomopsis platyphylla
, a mycorrhizal fungus
that associates with the roots of beech trees in Britain.
The relationship between mycorrhizal fungi and plants seems to have been made in
heaven, but here on earth it took some careful preparation before it could develop to its
full potential. Fungi probably arrived on the rocky, bacterially dominated land masses
about 500 million years ago, some 75 million years before plants. Fungi and plants both
evolved in the sea, but fungi are far more ancient, perhaps 1,200 million years old,
whereas the first plants are youngsters by comparison, appearing in the fossil record a
mere 425 million years ago.
