A mushroom
is the fleshy, spore-bearing fruiting body of a fungus, typically
produced above ground on soil or on its food source. The word
“mushroom” can also be used for a wide variety of gilled fungi, with or
without stems, and the term is used even more generally, to describe
both the fleshy fruiting bodies of some Ascomycota and the woody or leathery fruiting bodies of some Basidiomycota, depending upon the context of the word.