Toadstool Stock Image

A mushroom or toadstool is the fleshy, spore-bearing fruiting body of a fungus, typically produced above ground on soil or on its food source. The standard for the name `mushroom` is the cultivated white button mushroom, Agaricus bisporus; hence the word `mushroom` is most often applied to those fungi Basidiomycota, Agaricomycetes that have a stem stipe, a cap pileus, and gills lamellae, sing. lamella on the underside of the cap. These gills produce microscopic spores that help the fungus spread across the ground or its occupant surface. `Mushroom` describes a variety of gilled fungi, with or without stems, and the term is used even more generally, to describe both the fleshy fruiting bodies of some Ascomycota and the woody or leathery fruiting bodies of some Basidiomycota, depending upon the context of the word.