Mushroom Types
All About the Different Mushroom Types
There are many different mushroom types, and as the so-called fruits of the world of fungi, they attract a wide variety of enthusiasts. In this article, we will talk about mushroom types the world over, but we will start with the prominent mushroom types in the United States.
When people think of mushrooms, edibility is one of the first things they want to know about the various mushroom types. And some species of mushrooms are edible, among them Pacific Golden Chanterelle and Morels.
Many other mushroom types are better to leave where they grow. For example, the polypores group consists of five shelf mushrooms that are very common and just as inedible. They can be found in many woodland areas in the United States. The only poisonous mushroom on that list is Fly Algaric, with its trademark red and spotted cap. But it's better not to pick a mushroom if you don't know exactly what you're picking.
Knowing mushroom types will help keep you from picking potentially poisonous varieties. In fact, you're never totally safe, because you may pick a normally edible mushroom and if it's from an area where pesticides or commercial poisons are used, it could still be poisonous to eat.
If you wish to learn the most you can about mushroom types before you go picking (and you should do that), local botanical conservatories and agencies of the government may offer classes on the identification of different mushrooms in your area.
Mushroom types that don't conform to the typical form with caps, usually have names that describe this. There are “puffball”, “morel” and “stinkhorn” varieties. The genus Trichaptum is one example of a polypore, which is a mushroom with no stalk.
Typical mushrooms are members of the Agaricales order. The type genus is Agaricus and the species type is known as the field mushroom, or Agaricus campestris. Not all of the Agaricales order members produce the fruitbodies of mushrooms. Many of the other also-gilled fungi occur in different orders of the Agaricomycetes class.
In the main group of mushrooms, Agaricales, exist most of the common fungi that we know, like the oyster, enoki and shiitake mushrooms, the fly agarics and magic mushrooms including the Psilocybe species of shaggy manes and paddy straw mushrooms.
There are non-typical mushroom types, too. One of these is the Lobster mushroom, which is a fruitbody that is the color of cooked lobster. Other mushrooms may not have gills, and in those cases, the “mushroom” term is used only loosely. Some of these have spines and some have pores.
As we see, “mushroom” is a term that is commonly applied to many fruiting fungal bodies, rather than a term that has one specific meaning. There are over fourteen thousand species of mushrooms.