FFF’s Glossary is Active!

Dear Fungus Fact Friday readers,

I skipped writing a Fungus Fact this week in favor of working on this site’s glossary.  The glossary, which I will update more later today, is basically a list of all the words I’ve learned while studying fungi.  I also included some words from high school biology that are not used very often or are easily confused (for example, even I get mix up mitosis and meiosis sometimes).

What’s missing from the glossary:

• Shape Words: I do not have a list of all the random words for shapes of spores or mushrooms that I have come across. I will probably add those at a future point, but they are not very important for reading FFF posts.  I try to avoid using long shape words like “infundibuliform” in favor of terms I can understand, like “funnel-shaped.”
• Mushroom Descriptors: I left out many colors, textures, and positional words that often appear in mushroom descriptions.  Those usually make sense in context and are easier to explain with a ready example.  Perhaps I will add a guide to gill spacing (are they “close,” “distant,” or something else?) and similar things in the future.
• Pictures: Honestly, I didn’t have time to add pictures for the more important terms.  That will be a future project.
• Citations: The glossary has no citations for a few reasons.  For most of the words, I was familiar enough with them to write a definition without researching it (“gills,” for example).  The ones I did research were cobbled together from multiple sources and my experience.  While I could have added citations for all the definitions, that would have taken much too long and I think citations are a bit out-of-place in a glossary of this kind.  What does this mean?  Do not cite FFF’s glossary in your own work!  Find a more authoritative source.  Also, do research for yourself if you don’t believe what I’ve written.

I hope you enjoy learning about everything from adnate to zygospore!

Thomas Roehl