414 



Mushrooms and Toadstools 



Every botanist is asked frequently how to tell a mushroom from 

 a toadstool. As a matter of fact there is no difference between a 

 mushroom and a toadstool. Every fungus that produces a fleshy or 

 woody or jelly-like fruit-body which is large enough to be studied 

 without a microscope may be called a mushroom, or it may be called 

 a toadstool. Personally 1 prefer to call them mushrooms. There are 

 hundreds of kinds of mushrooms, very many of which are edible, and 

 many not edible, but only a few of which are poisonous. The question 

 then should be, not how to tell a mushroom from a toadstool, but how 

 to tell edible from poisonous mushrooms, or edible from poisonous 

 toadstools. The answer is practically the same as it would be if the 

 question were how to tell sweet apples from sour apples without tast- 

 ing. One must learn the botanical characters of each kind, and learn 

 them so well that he recognizes the various kinds at sight as easily as 

 he recognizes the members of his own family. It cannot be too 

 strongly emphasized that there is no such thing as a "rule" by which 

 the edible kinds may be distinguished from the poisonous. It must 

 be remembered that mushrooms are the fruits of fungus plants, and 

 it is no more difficult to learn fifty kinds of mushrooms than it is to 

 learn fifty kinds of trees or fifty kinds of birds. A child on being 

 introduced to different kinds of fruits for the first time may mistake 

 a pear for an apple, but after he has once learned them he does not 

 make that mistake. Neither will one mistake one kind of mushroom 

 for another after he has once learned them; but no one should eat 

 any kind of mushroom until he has learned to recognize it at sight 

 and to call it by name. 



Thiv Mushroom Plant 



LIFE history and DEVELOPMENT 



The vegetative part of the mushroom plant, in most cases, growls 

 entirely within the substratum or material on which it lives. This 

 material may be the soil, or rotten wood, or the bark or wood of a 

 living tree, depending on the kind of mushroom. This vegetative part 

 of the plant consists of a network of branched threadlike structures 

 called hyphae, the whole mass of hyphae taken together being called 

 the mycelium. The spawn which can be purchased from seedsmen con- 

 sists of this mycelium mixed with the soil and manure in which the 

 plant grew. 



The life history of the fungus plant begins, not in a seed, but in a 

 spore. A single spore is usually too small to be seen with the naked 

 eye, and consists of a tiny bit of living protoplasm enclosed within a 



