What are toadstools?
A toadstool is the fruiting body of a fungus. There has never been a precise definition as to what makes a fruiting body a toadstool, and there is no clear distinction between toadstools and mushrooms. • The ‘classic’ image of a toadstool is that of a fruiting body with a stalk and a cap – think of the caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland, sitting atop a toadstool, smoking his hookah. • The word mushroom is also used for a fruiting body of this type, although this term is also often applied to other types of fungal fruiting bodies such as brackets and puffballs. • The term toadstool has often been applied to poisonous or inedible fruiting bodies, but this is not a universally-accepted definition. • In the same way, just because a fruiting body is referred to in the literature as a mushroom you should not assume that it is edible.
