The fungi (singular, fungus) once were considered to be plants because they grow out of the soil and have rigid cell walls. Now they are placed independently in their own kingdom of equal rank with the animals and plants and, in fact, are more closely related to animals than to plants. read more
The fungi cell walls are chemically different from plant cell walls, chitinous vs cellulosic. Because of things like this and other differences, taxonomists place them in separate kingdoms, where a kingdom is a grouping of life forms based on evolutionarily distance with respect to life forms not in the same kingdom. read more
Fruiting bodies are temporary structures in the life cycle; the primary body of all fungi is in reality the diffuse, widespreading mycelium. The fungi reproduce by spores, both asexual and sexual, and the details and structures of the sexual process separate the kingdom into four phyla (see Table 1 ). read more
A plant is separated from fungi by its 'food' or eenrgy source, plants are autotrophs, they produce their own food by photosynthesis, fungi do not, they are heterotrophs and take their food from others, usually trees or dead bits of wood. read more