[b said:
Quote[/b] ]I duno why fungus is considered a bad thing. Many plants benfit from a relationship with fungus.
Well, have you ever seen a "faerie ring"?? There's a mushroom, then it spreads out in a ciricle pattern, the old ones die off, so what you're left with is a dead inside of a circle and then a ring of mushrooms, then living grass and such on the outside. The mushrooms take the nutrients, killing what was there before. So, the fact is that while some mushrooms would play nice with your plants, others would not. I dunno, I think mushrooms are cool, especially now that I know a bit more about them, they really are interesting. And yummy.
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]apparently fungi also give them glucose? if they don't photosynthesize, are they parasites on the fungus? What do they give back in return? You can't live solely on nutrients... you need carbohydrates.
95% of vascular plants have root symbiosis with fungi (mycorrhizae). One example where it's expecially noticeable is in legumes (peas, etc, etc
on the roots you see nodules that have formed by a fungus. The fungi increase the root's surface area allowing the plant to get more nutrients and they get sustinence from the plant (because it gets shipped down to support the roots.) In the instance of legumes, there are further bacteria that reside within the nodules, they are nitrogen fixing bacteria that take nitrogen from the air and bind it to the soil, or sulphur releasing bacteria which make nutrients in the soil avaiable ("or aid in", rather, because plants do some of that on their own.) Oh, and by the way, a lot of the time you can buy seeds (or do so without even knowing it) that have been treated with bacteria so the nodules are sure to form. And there you have it.
As for the picture, I have no idea what kind of fungus that is, sorry.
--Edit: Just remembered the bit about the underground orchid-
Rhizanthella gardneri grow completely underground, even the flower tip doesn't break the ground's surface. They live off of the decaying material of broom honey myrtle stumes and are linked to said stumps by a fungus. They were only dicovered because the flowers, while not appearing above ground, do make cracks in the ground. They're very interesting but VERY rare (at least this species sure is).