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Parts of a Mushroom
Appears in
By Michael Hyams and Liz O'Keefe
Published 2017
No two mushroom types are quite the same, but their division, class, family and genus can mean they have similar characteristics, such as gills, ridges, pores and/or spines. Some mushrooms have typical features; some do not. Some features can be present but more or less obviously, and their appearance can change of course with age.
Many mushrooms grow from a volva, produced by the mushroom’s mycelium; from the volva, the universal veil grows, protecting the mushroom’s fruiting body growing inside, which finally bursts out of the veil into a stem and cap, usually featuring gills underneath, from which the spores are dispersed. Mushrooms either have gills, ridges, spines (also known as tubes), pits, pores or none of those at all!