Something rotten...

After so much mild, wet weather this summer it promises to be a good autumn for toadstools. I found this fungal mycelium, composed of bundles of microscopically small fungal hyphae, growing over the surface of decaying pine bark mulch in our garden. Ultimately they'll digest food that lies in their path, multiply, unite and organise themselves into a toadstool, the fungal fruiting body that produces spores, but exactly how this transformation is organised remains one of nature's mysteries. 

There's more on the microscopic structure of toadstools here