How Do You Tell The Mushrooms From The Toadstools?
One is often asked the question: “How do you tell the mushrooms from the
toadstools?” This implies that mushrooms are edible and that toadstools
are poisonous, and this belief is very widespread in the public mind.
The fact is that many of the toadstools are edible, the common belief
that all of them are poisonous being due to unfamiliarity with the
plants or their characteristics.
Some apply the term mushroom to a single species, the one in
cultivation, and which grows also in fields (_Agaricus campestris_), and
call all others toadstools.
It is becoming customary with some students
to apply the term mushroom to the entire group of higher fungi to which
the mushroom belongs (_Basidiomycetes_), and toadstool is regarded as a
synonymous term, since there is, strictly speaking, no distinction
between a mushroom and a toadstool. There are, then, edible and
poisonous mushrooms, or edible and poisonous toadstools, as one chooses
to employ the word.