Mushroom

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 another name for a mushroom. Some mushrooms can be eaten, and are used for cooking in many countries: China, Korea and many European countries. People who look for mushrooms to eat are called mycophagists, meaning "mushroom eater". The act of looking for mushrooms is simply called "mushrooming".

Kinds of mushrooms

The fly agaric mushroom is poisonous

• Agarics (includes very poisonous, and hallucinogenic kinds)
• Boletus (edible)
• 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

Structure of mushrooms

Most mushrooms have a stem and a cap. The bottom of the cap sometimes has gills to hold spores, and sometimes holds the spores themselves.

Other websites

Identification

• Mushroom Expert
• MykoWeb
• An Aid to Mushroom Identification, Simon's Rock College
• Online Edible Wild Mushroom Field Guide
• Mushroom Observer (mushroomobserver.org), a collaborative mushroom recording and identification project
• list of field guides to mushrooms, from the International Field Guides database

Research associations

• Mushroom Mania; the Newsletter
• North American Mycological Association
• International Society for Mushroom Science
• Pacific Northwest Fungi Online Journal