For Release August 4, 1998

Are They Mushrooms or Toadstools?

AGRI-VIEWS
by Chuck Otte, County Extension Agricultural Agent

I despise common names for plants and in many cases prefer the scientific genus and species names. Take the elm trees for example. The tree that most people call the Chinese Elm is ‘Ulmus pumila’. Ulmus pumila has the "accepted" common name of Siberian Elm. The true Chinese Elm is ‘Ulmus parvifolia’ and is a very desirable tree. When you start dealing with weeds, grasses and native flowers the confusion gets even worse with regionally accepted common names changing every few hundred miles.

Common names for mammals, reptiles, amphibians and birds seem to be somewhat more universally accepted, with a few exceptions ( in Europe loons are known as divers). Insects and fungi, however, are somewhat worse than plants. With so many species known to scientists many of the less common don’t even have common names. The 17-year cicada (locust) or periodical cicada that we had earlier this year is actually three separate species that don’t even have a common name other than 17-year cicada. Once again we run into confusion with names because most people call them locusts when in reality locusts are grasshoppers which are in a completely different insect order, etc. etc.

If we broaden the whole scope out a little more we see even more problems. I refer to any unwanted growth in a lawn, pasture or crop field as a weed. Then we have two basic types of weeds, grasses and broadleaf or what botanists refer to as monocots or dicots, but don’t worry about that right now. Yet I know that when a farmer calls me and says he has a weed problem in his soybean field he means a broadleaf plant. If he had a grass problem he’d say grass.

I was not surprised this past week when, after heavy rains, warm temperatures and warm soil, there were white growths erupting all over everywhere. Fungi (the plural of fungus) are everywhere in the natural world around us. Most of the mushroom producing fungi feed on decaying organic matter. This is often tree roots, but can be any source of organic matter including grass and weed roots or just accumulated organic matter in the soil. Mushrooms are the "seed" bearing structure of the fungus organism although in this case the seeds are tiny dusty particles known as spores. The mushroom is, to the fungus, what the tomato is to the tomato plant.

What surprised me last week were the calls asking if these were mushrooms or toadstools. Since I was at the fair I didn’t talk with these callers, but what I suspect was that they were using mushroom to indicate an edible nonpoisonous mushroom and toadstool to indicate a poisonous or non-edible mushroom. I won’t play that game! I generally will not identify plants or bugs over the phone and I certainly will not identify mushrooms over the phone. I will not get into the game of saying toadstools or mushrooms because they are all mushrooms!

There are over 725 species of mushrooms known to exist in Kansas. Most of the good reference books will describe about 150 of the more common ones. Even if you bring one into my office I will decline to identify it because most people want to eat them. The difference between nonpoisonous and poisonous species can be very slight. Many of the more common ones showing up now are poisonous. I’m not going to take the risk. I have learned to identify quite a few mushrooms and am trying to learn more, but mushroom identification is tricky.

Rule of thumb: If you want good safe mushrooms, buy them in a store. Everything growing in the lawn can be appreciated for their interesting characteristics and then left alone. With this wet, humid, warm weather continuing, you can expect to see more and more mushrooms appearing almost everywhere. Enjoy their beauty but leave the eating of them to the experts!

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