Mushrooms Dissected: Essential Anatomy for Foragers 🍄🔍

Venture below the surface with us and level up your mushroom knowledge in just 9 minutes. This is mushroom anatomy and identification 101.

Mushrooms are ubiquitous here on Earth. You can find them in fields, parks, forests, and at the base of trees in front of houses. 

They can be beautiful, ugly, tasty, or toxic. The fungi world is a vast and diverse place full of marvels.

The world of fungi is a realm of endless intrigue, teeming with species that have evolved over millions of years, each with its own unique story and function in the ecosystem. They form a hidden network, connecting plants, trees, and the soil in a web of life often referred to as the "Wood Wide Web."

Today, we're going to explore the defining characteristics of different species of mushrooms and how you can use them to help identify the shrooms you find in the wild.

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Mushrooms: What The Heck Is Even That? 🍄

Mushrooms are the fleshy fruiting bodies of certain species of fungi belonging to the Agaricomycetes class. Mushrooms are the "reproductive organs" of the fungi's primary body (called mycelium), which lives underground, inside deadwood, or, in some cases, inside the roots of plants.

A mushroom's purpose is to produce spores and reproduce in much the same way a plant produces seeds to create new plants.

Mushrooms can come in all different shapes and sizes, but in general, feature the same basic components: 

• Cap (Plius) — fleshy tissue that covers the tops and sometimes the sides of the mushroom. 

• Gills — the dark underside of the mushroom is where the spores are produced. 

• Stem (Stipe) — most (but not all) mushrooms have a stem to extend the spore-producing organs above the ground to help the spores disperse further. 

• Base (Volva) — the base of the mushroom stem anchors it to the mycelium under the surface.

• Mycelium — long, thin threads of single-cell wide hyphae grow inside the food the mushroom consumes. This forms the majority of a fungus' biomass.

• Spores — this is essentially the "seed" of the mushroom. After germinating, spores form haploid mycelia. When two haploid mycelia meet one another, they merge to create a more stable diploid version.

A typical mushroom has eight anatomical features. These features are apparent in most mushrooms but will differ slightly from species to species. 

Learning to spot these subtle differences is the key to identifying different species of mushrooms and becoming a successful mushroom hunter.

Some species of mushrooms may not have all of these anatomical features — others do, but they aren't recognizable. Mushrooms are a bit of a rebellious bunch — they don't like to be placed into taxonomic boxes and try their best to break the rules. 

For example, the puffball mushrooms (species in the Lycoperdon and Calvatia genera) have caps, but they're unrecognizable as they completely envelop the gills. Many of these mushrooms also lack stems.

Here are the eight anatomical features of a mushroom, the purpose they serve, and how you can use them to assist in a positive ID: