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buegskee1 said:
whats the easiest way to get some plant/mushrooms checked out with microscopy and what not as there is a herb garden booming out back and would love to know if there is a certain occurance taking place to make it so,
any suggestions anyone?

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That is perhaps the longest run-on sentence I've seen in a while.



So let me get this straight ... You want to know what plants are blooming in your herb garden in your backyard and why they're blooming? Usually photoperiod influences plant flowering but it is not the only mechanism.

Most plants do not require microscopy to ID, only morphological characteristics such as size, leaf shape, flower structure, etc. You can get good books on ID'ing local plants.

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buegskee1 said:
Yeah my bad, I found it harder to explain than expected.
Well I guess haha but there is also quite a large amount of mycelia throughout soil and on the pine bark chips, mainly I would like to know the effects the mycorrizae attached to the root system has on the growth of the plants  as I found a separated root with mycelium hyphaes attached, and cannot identify the form of mycorrizae which has formed.
I am leaning towards an arbuscular connection with a sweet basil tree as there are only shrooms fruiting under that plant and rather close to the stem.

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This is what mycorrhizal fungi do for their specific host plants,  The one on the left is without, the one on the right with.



Also, keep in mind that roots, including the fine ones, can stretch a fair distance. This is why you can find mycorrhizal fungi like chanterelles and morels fruiting 150-200 ft. away from their counterpart host's base. Just because they are not right next to the plant does not mean that they are not mycorrhizal with that plant. On the other hand, mycorrhizal fungi fruiting near a plant does not mean you should assume that the nearby plant to be the mycorrhizal host of that fungus.

As for how, mycorrhizal fungi have really small hyphae, smaller than the roots of most trees/plants. That being so, the hyphae have more surface area to interact with the surrounding soil and can, therefore, take up more nutrients than the roots without them can. So the tree has to do less work and give only a portion of that energy to the fungus, so it wins doubly.