Mushroom rain
Mushrooms reproduce with tiny particles called spores, releasing billions of them daily. For example, this fungus, the FUNGAL BRACKET (Latin: Ganoderma applanatum), effortlessly releases about 5 billion spores per day. If you find a bracket fungus in the forest on a dry day, it will likely be entirely "dusted" with brown spores, and probably all other plants around it will be covered too. Each year, mushrooms release about 50 million tons of spores into the world. This fantastic number might be easier to grasp by imagining that it would weigh as much as about 500,000 blue whales (I remind you that spores are microscopic particles).
But certainly not all spores remain lying next to the mushroom. Some are luckier and, catching a good current of wind, manage to travel even into higher atmospheric layers, where clouds form. Clouds form in the air when water droplets condense from water vapor as the temperature drops. However, for this process to occur more quickly and efficiently, certain particles are needed upon which these water droplets can form. It is precisely these airborne spores that often become such particles! Due to certain properties, spores serve as excellent nuclei on which water droplets, and from them clouds, form in humid air. Thus, in this way, mushrooms create clouds and rain!
It seems the old Dzūkians used the saying, "it's raining mushrooms." This saying, upon learning about mushrooms forming clouds and rain, takes on a slightly different aspect. Those old folks, who learned from the forest, were insightful.
