Mushroom

From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Image of a Mushroom
Image of a Mushroom

A mushroom is a kind of fungi. A toadstool is a poisonous mushroom.

[edit] Kinds of mushrooms

  • Agarics (includes edible, poisonous, and hallucinogenic kinds)
  • Boletes
  • 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.

[edit] 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.