I woke up last Sunday morning, groggily trudging over to the kitchen counter to pick up a few tangerines because a) I WAS STARVING (that I even dreamed of eating breakfast in my dream, which woke me up because I thought I was hungry) and b) I love tangerines!

We had recently bought the tangerines, and they were big and plump, so I was excited to have my hands on a few tangerines. Interestingly, the last tangerine I had remaining after eating the others felt strange. I could feel some sort of a knob on the bottom of the tangerine, and the knob wasn’t a hard knob, but rather it was more soft, and flexible than a usual “knob” on a tangerine would feel like. So, I turned the tangerine over to see a bit closer, and I think I discovered some sort of a mushroom growing on the tangerine! There was a beige stem growing, with a brown-colored, wide top, so I assumed it was a mushroom. Also, on the stem were tiny brown dots (which all seemed like baby mushrooms)

These are photos of what it looked like:

Following this discovery, I immediately sent an email with a photo of this mushroom like organism to my biology teacher ( we often discuss and debate about random biology-related questions). He responded that it could possibly be a root (although it is quite unlikely as the seeds themselves are inside the tangerine), but most likely, he predicted this organism was a fungus, which does prove my prediction/discovery that this is a mushroom growing on a tangerine!

I just thought it would be interesting to share a very unique phenomenon 🙂

– Joanna Kim, March 22nd, 2021, 10:58PM KST