Question

how do plants and fungi differ

Answer 1

Welcome to Open Study @demetridogias

Answer 2

@demetridogias Well, fortunately for you I am a Mycologist.

First, Fungi are more closely related to animals that plants.

Plants are largely autotrophs
Fungi are absorptive heterotrophs
Cell wall in plants is cellulose and lignin
Cell wall in fungi is chitin

I don't know how much detail you need but we could go on and on but those are probably the key large-scale differences.

Answer 3

The biggest difference between fungi and plants is that fungi cannot make their own food whereas plants can.
Another difference is that fungi has no chlorophyll, the substance that makes plants green.
A third difference is that plants reproduce using pollen and seeds, and fungi reproduce using spores.

Answer 4

It seems that the only reason that anyone would even think of classifying them under the same Kingdom name, is that they are both stationary,and cannot go find their own food.

Answer 5

@AnnieDJ204, fungi are not stationary. There are plenty of single cell yeast and chytrids which can move in aqueous environments. In fact, some fungi do hunt. There are some amazing species that build specialized structures that attract and trap nematodes in them. https://microbewiki.kenyon.edu/index.php/Nematode_trapping_fungi

There are also fungi that shot spores at flies, fungi that infect insects and sometimes literally take over the insect's body. There is a species that infects ants, makes the ant climb high above the colony, then forms a structure out of the ants head that releases spores down onto the colony. A member of the Atheliales makes things called sclerotia that look like termite eggs and smell like them. The termites then take these sclerotia into the colony where the fungi starts growing and killing the termites.

I could go on and on.

Anyway, yes fungi reproduce, at times, using spores, and plants use seeds (though some, like ferns use structures called spores, but these are not the same as fungal spores). Both fungi and plants can reproduce sexually or asexually.

Again, the key differences are:

the ancestor to all modern plants (and most current plants) are autotrophs
the ancestor of all modern fungi and all current fungi are heterotrophs
the cell wall of plants and the cell wall of fungi are made of different chemicals
the growth patterns are completely different as well.