Ask the Chatbot Games & Quizzes History & Society Science & Tech Biographies Animals & Nature Geography & Travel Arts & Culture ProCon Money Videos
Basidiomycetes
References
Images
Diagram of the tree of life based on the three-domain system, showing Archaea, Bacteria, and Eukaryota branching into four kingdoms: Plants, Animals, Fungi, and Protista, with illustrations of representative organisms for each group.
Britannica AI Icon

Basidiomycetes

class of fungi
Written by
The Information Architects of Encyclopaedia Britannica

The Information Architects maintain a master list of the topics included in the corpus of  Encyclopædia Britannica, and create and manage the relationships between them.
The Information Architects of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Last updated

Quick Summary

Diagram of the tree of life based on the three-domain system, showing Archaea, Bacteria, and Eukaryota branching into four kingdoms: Plants, Animals, Fungi, and Protista, with illustrations of representative organisms for each group.
The three-domain classification of life-forms The tree of life according to the three-domain system of biological classification, consisting of the prokaryote groups Archaea and Bacteria and the eukaryotes, Eukaryota.

Basidiomycetes are a large and diverse group of fungi that includes familiar organisms like mushrooms, puffballs, and shelf fungi. They are characterized by having septate hyphae (filamentous structures) and producing spores on club-shaped organs called basidia.12

In many Basidiomycetes, these basidia are found on macroscopic fruiting bodies known as basidiocarps, which are commonly recognized as mushrooms or other visible fungal structures. Rusts and smuts are exceptions within this phylum as they typically do not form these large fruiting bodies. The life cycle of Basidiomycota involves a dikaryotic mycelium, where cells contain two haploid nuclei, before nuclear fusion and meiosis occur within the basidia to produce spores.314

Summary created from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles.
4 Britannica Sources
  1. basidiocarp
  2. basidiomycete
  3. Basidiomycota
  4. fungus - Life cycle of fungi

Ask Britannica AI about this topic

Britannica doesn't have a full article on this topic, so we've curated a list of our relevant coverage.