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Jujitsu Procreation

image copyright Fred First

You let the force of your opponent work to your advantage. Typically, if you're a mushroom or other fungus, wet weather means your spores won't go far in the wind, and your odds of spreading fungus genes into the wild go way down.

But a few members of this odd Kingdom of living things use rain to serve their purpose. The familiar "puffball" type fungus is an example: a fallen twig hits the swollen hollow bag of spores, and POOF! out the hole at the top come tens of thousands of gene-packets, and a few that will survive to become future puffballs.

This little fungus is called, for obvious reasons, the bird's nest fungus. Each nest is perhaps a quarter inch across, and once it unfurls from its ball-shaped beginnings, you'll see inside the silver-pebble "eggs" that are the spores. Notice here there are from none to four inside, with some spores already splashed out onto the mulch, making more nests.

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