Is mycelium microscopic?
Is mycelium microscopic?
What does it matter? I ask the question for the purpose of categorizing the characters of fungi. Where to place them in webpage forms that make sense to users?
Spoiler Alert! My conclusion is both Macro AND Micro!
If you use a microscope for this character, it will be in micro, if not macro. Done.
Read more below to make this conclusion obvious or the opposite of obvious. We are talking mycology, so either is acceptable, OBVIOUSLY.
The original question brings up more questions. Are we talking about a single mycelium? The plural of mycelium, mycelia, would refer to the mycelia of more than one fungus in order to be correct. A single mycelium can be an infant fungus consisting of one hypha or ?
Again from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_organisms: "The largest living fungus may be a honey fungus[25] of the species Armillaria ostoyae. ... possibly weighing as much as 35,000 tons.[25][27][28] This organism is estimated to be 2,400 years old. ... It is not known, however, whether it is a single organism with all parts of the mycelium connected."
In this discussion, "It is not known, however, whether it is a single organism with all parts of the mycelium connected." Kind of matters.
Illustrated Dictionary of Mycology Ulloa Hanlin
mycelium definition (page 395): the entire mass of hyphae that constitutes the vegetative body or thallus of a fungus. hypha definition (page 292): a tubular filament that represents the structural entity (thallus) of the majority of the fungi.The Fifth Kingdom An Introduction to Mycology fourth Edition Kendrick
mycelium definition: (Glossary page 475): mycelium (pl. = mycelia): collective term for hyphae; the vegetative thallus of a fungus excluding organs of sporulation or sclerotia.
mycelium - mention in text (page 16): ...typically at the many growing points of their rather diffuse, indefinite 'body' (often called a thallus or mycelium), which is made up of fine branching tubes call hyphae.
hypha definition (Glossary page 470): hypha (pl. = hypha): the tubular architectural module of almost all fungi, its wall chitinous in eumycotan fungi, cellulosic in oomycetes.
hypha - mention in text (page 41): HYPHAE. These are the vegetative, assimilative organs of most fungi. When a spore germinates, what emerges is a hypha (sometimes more than one hypha), which grows at its tip and explores the microscopic world in which it landed.
Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycelium: Mycelium (pl.: mycelia)[a] is a root-like structure of a fungus consisting of a mass of branching, thread-like hyphae.[1] Its normal form is that of branched, slender, entangled, anastomosing, hyaline threads.[2] Fungal colonies composed of mycelium are found in and on soil and many other substrates. A typical single spore germinates into a monokaryotic mycelium,[1] which cannot reproduce sexually; when two compatible monokaryotic mycelia join and form a dikaryotic mycelium, that mycelium may form fruiting bodies such as mushrooms.[3] A mycelium may be minute, forming a colony that is too small to see, or may grow to span thousands of acres as in Armillaria.