What Makes a ‘Fungus’ Different from a ‘Plant’?

Fungi and plants might look similar, but they're like cousins who eat different foods. Plants make their own food using sunlight, like a kitchen inside them. Fungi don’t do that, they eat other things, like a hungry animal in a forest. This means their cells are built differently too. Plants have green walls (chloroplasts) that help them cook food, but fungi don’t. Instead, they use special tools called hyphae to absorb nutrients from the ground or from decaying matter.

Take the quiz →

Examples

  1. A mushroom grows in the soil after eating a dead tree, that's a fungus.
  2. A plant growing in sunlight uses sunlight to make its food, not from a dead tree like a fungus would.
  3. The difference is like between someone who cooks their own food and someone who eats what other people have left over.

Ask a question

See also

Discussion

Recent activity

Nothing here yet.