Mushroom

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A mushroom

A mushroom is the fruiting body of a kind of fungus. Unlike plants, mushrooms do not use sunlight to make energy for themselves. A toadstool is a poisonous mushroom. Some mushrooms that can be eaten are used for cooking in many countries such as China, Korea and many European countries. People who look for mushrooms to eat are called mycophagists, meaning "mushroom eater".^[1] The act of looking for mushrooms is simply called "mushrooming".

[change] Kinds of mushrooms

Agarics (includes edible, poisonous, and hallucinogenic kinds)
Boletes (edible and many people consider delicious)
Bracket fungi
Chanterelles (edible)
Coral fungi (edible)
Cup fungi (usually edible)
Jelly fungi (usually edible, but tastes bad)
Polypores (similar to boletes)
Psychedelic (also known as shrooms)
Puffballs (usually edible)
Stinkhorns (edible, but smells bad)
Tooth fungi

It is hard to pick mushrooms in the wild, because most mushrooms have "look-alikes". Mushroom hunters learn how to tell these look-alikes apart, usually by chemical features. Edible mushrooms are used in cooking in many cultures and are usually grown in farms. In some places in the world, people learn already in childhood to recognize the edible and delicious mushrooms in the wild.