Location: Exhibition complex / 5th floor / Exhibition hall #11 (greenhouse)

We invite you to the «Mushroom Kingdom» – world of mysterious, sometimes dangerous and always unique creatures that have settled in all corners of the globe. You will learn why mushrooms are called "aliens" and how they got their own kingdom. With the help of valuable advice from biologists you will learn to distinguish edible mushrooms from non-edible ones and will take home a luggage of new knowledge about the "strange children of nature". Adults will be delighted with recipes of mushroom dishes from different countries of the world, and young visitors will be met by educational games awaiting at the «Mushroom Glade».

Having appeared over a billion years ago, mushrooms gradually and silently conquered the world. Their omnipresence is simply amazing! They live in water, in the air, on land. They can be found on all continents, including Antarctica. With many survival strategies in their arsenal, mushrooms are perfectly integrated into the ecosystem of our planet. Some of them help plants get the necessary minerals, others destroy complex organic molecules, facilitating the circulation of substances, and some settle on bare stones and prepare the "soil" for other organisms. "Conquerors in Hats" will be presented at the exhibition with replicas of real mushrooms made by biologist Gennady Kurilin with usage a unique author's technique.

Biologists call mushrooms "space aliens" because these living organisms are so unique. From the time of the Roman Empire until the middle of the XX century scientific minds could not attribute mushrooms to any known kingdom of nature. Their ability to combine the characteristics of plants and animals and at the same time retain their own individuality baffled even the famous biologist Carl Linnaeus. The father of systematics mistakenly assigned them a place in the kingdom Plantae, where they were listed until the middle of the XX century. And only after the latest microbiological research mycologists honorably identified them in the separate kingdom "Fungi".

The exhibition takes visitors to a forest thicket, where harmless boletus, chanterelles, saffron mushrooms, honey mushrooms, as well as their deadly poisonous twins and their neighbors fly agaric, white grebe, satanic and gall mushrooms and others “grow”. Mushrooms deserve special attention growing on plant debris like fallen leaves, needles and rotten stumps, as well as parasitic fungi that capture living trees.


In a dark blue forest where aspens tremble... Photographer: M. Ponamarev.


Puff... Pear-shaped puffball. Photographer: A. Vetrov


Warmed by the autumn sun. Photographer: T. Maksimova


Schizophyllum commune. Photographer: M. Ponamarev

Актуальные мероприятия