View allAll Photos Tagged toadstool
Large yellow toadstools are coming up along the trail in the state gamelands. The largest one I saw (not this one) had a cap as big as a dinner plate. Magical!
This is just one of the many toys that I buy for my daughter and end up keeping because she would rather play with a plastic bag. Isn't it cute?
Mushroom vs. toadstool
The relative sizes of the cap (pileus) and stalk (stipe) vary widely. Shown here is a species of Macrolepiota.
The terms "mushroom" and "toadstool" go back centuries and were never precisely defined, nor was there consensus on application.
The term "toadstool" was often, but not exclusively, applied to poisonous mushrooms or to those that have the classic umbrella-like cap-and-stem form. Between 1400 and 1600 A.D., the terms tadstoles, frogstooles, frogge stoles, tadstooles, tode stoles, toodys hatte, paddockstool, puddockstool, paddocstol, toadstoole, and paddockstooles sometimes were used synonymously with mushrom, mushrum, muscheron, mousheroms, mussheron, or musserouns.[3]
The term "mushroom" and its variations may have been derived from the French word mousseron in reference to moss (mousse). There may have been a direct connection to toads (in reference to poisonous properties) for toadstools. However, there is no clear-cut delineation between edible and poisonous fungi, so that a "mushroom" may be edible, poisonous, or unpalatable. The term "toadstool" is nowadays used in storytelling when referring to poisonous or suspect mushrooms. The classic example of a toadstool is Amanita muscaria.
Peeking out from the underbrush
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