Repost for December, 2014:
In the past month, here in Red Bluff, California, we have had many days with rain. These rainy days have caused the spores from many types of mushrooms and puffballs to appear in the ground around our home. Karen has stalked these little fungi, and taken many pictures.
"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) or pores on the underside of the cap. These pores or 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.
Forms deviating from the standard
morphology usually have more specific names, such as "
puffball", "
stinkhorn", and "
morel", and gilled mushrooms themselves are often called "
agarics" in reference to their similarity to
Agaricus or their place
Agaricales. By extension, the term "mushroom" can also designate the entire fungus when in culture; the
thallus (called a
mycelium) of species forming the fruiting bodies called mushrooms; or the species itself."
-
Mushroom - Wikipedia
