Basidiomycetes are a huge and diversified phylum of fungus (kingdom Fungi), which includes jelly and shelf fungi, mushrooms, puffballs, and stinkhorns, yeasts, and rusts and smuts.
Basidiomycetes are be found in soil, logs, and tree trunks, as well as as plant parasites.
Basidiomycetes are filamentous fungi with hyphae as their main structure.
Most species reproduce sexually by producing four sexual spores from a club-shaped spore-bearing organ (basidium).