Donald Burdette, age 12, of Peoria, Illinois, for his question;

How do mushrooms compare with toadstools?

Mushrooms and toadstools are all members of the fungus plant family, There are countless varieties of fungio ranging from the big puff balls to the tiny yeasts that make our daily bread. Over a hundred fungi are good to cat, some are harmful and a few are downright poisonous. Ile very often class the good ones as mushrooms and the bad ones as toadstools.

It would be fine if the different fungi wore signs, Fat Me$ Better Leave Me Alone or Definitly Leave Me, Alone, But they do not, What’s more, at certain stages$ some of the worst resemble some of the best. Only an expert dar‑s to go gathering strange fungi growing wild with the idea of sampling a new flavor, Andy suggests that you never, never eat a wild mushroom unless someone who is quite sure tells you that it is not a toadstool.

All the fungi with white spore powder in the gills under the umbrella are poisonous. So are those with milky white juice. The most dangerous have a round base to the stem. An expert avoids these danger signs ‑ but even this is not enough. He avoids all baby mushrooms growing in the wild. For some of these youngsters look just like friends and turn out to be enemies.