A mushroom is the spore bearing, fruiting, fleshy body of fungus.
It is produced above ground on soil or on its source of food.

Like all fungi, mushrooms are not plants and do not photosynthesize. The standard for the name “mushroom” is the cultivated white button mushroom.

Hence the word “mushroom” is most often applied to those fungi that have a stem, a cap and gills or pores on the underside of the cap.

“Mushroom” describes a variety of gilled fungi, with or without stems, and the term is used even more generally, to describe both the fleshy fruiting bodies and the woody or leathery fruiting bodies.

Nutrition:-

Mushrooms are a low-calorie food usually eaten raw or cooked to garnish a meal. Raw dietary mushrooms are a good source of B vitamins, selenium, copper and potassium.

Known as the meat of the vegetarians, edible mushrooms are used extensively in many cuisines – Chinese, Japanese, Korean and European.

Most mushrooms that are sold have been commercially grown in controlled, sterilized environments. They are perfectly safe to eat.

In recent years increasing affluence in developing countries has led to a considerable growth in interest in mushroom cultivation, which is now seen as a potentially important economic activity for small farmers.

There are a number of species of mushroom that are poisonous and consuming them could prove fatal. Eating mushrooms gathered in the wild is risky and should not be undertaken.

More generally, and particularly with gilled mushrooms, separating edible from poisonous species requires meticulous attention to detail; there is no single trait by which all toxic mushrooms can be identified, nor one by which all edible mushrooms can be identified.

China is the world’s largest edible mushroom producer. The country produces about half of all cultivated mushrooms, and around 2.7 kilograms (6.0 lb) of mushrooms is consumed per person per year by over a billion people