Mycel

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The network of fine, thread-like filaments that makes up the main vegetative body of a fungus and typically grows hidden within soil or wood
2. The root-like tangle of branching hyphae through which a fungus absorbs nutrients and spreads beneath the surface of its food source
3. A mass of interwoven fungal threads that forms the hidden growing structure from which mushrooms and other fruiting bodies later emerge

Etymology: Ancient Greeks had a word for mushrooms, "mykes," but no word for the hidden web beneath them. "Mycelium" was built much later from that Greek root, which gave modern biology "mycology," the study of fungi. The ending is a Latinized element that scientists used to name a body part or structure, so the term reads as a deliberate technical label rather than an old folk word. The threads that make up this network are called hyphae, from Greek "hyphē," meaning "web." The mycelium is the mass those threads form, usually underground or inside wood, food, or soil. Its visible fruiting bodies, the mushrooms, are only the reproductive tips of a much larger organism that can spread across a wide area.