For most people, mushrooms are something they buy in the grocery store, put on their pizza, or see on the ground when they're in the woods on a team building retreat. They rarely think about them as having types or varieties and never dream of all the uses there are for mushrooms in the world. Many people don't even know that it is a fungus! If you've always wondered about the types of mushrooms and their uses, this article can be the beginning of your enlightenment.

Did you know that there are over 14,000 varieties of mushroom? It's true! And not all of them have the distinctive toadstool shape that we're used to. There are many different species of mushroom, including the polyphore, which has several colored rings. Some fungi grow on the ground, some grow under the ground, and still others cling to trees waiting for a Toronto naturopathic doctor to pluck them off and use them in a medicine. Mushrooms are differentiated by shape, size, color, and sometimes by chemical tests.

Edible mushrooms are a good source of B vitamins, riboflavin, and essential minerals and have virtually no fat. However, out of over 14,000 species, only 11 are edible. The rest are poisonous and even hallucinogenic. Therefore unless you are a mycologist (fungus expert) you should never eat a mushroom you see growing in the wild, even if you are starving. Although there are only a few mushrooms, such as the death cap, that can actually kill you, the rest will make you high or sick, thereby getting you fired from doing catering in Toronto, Ontario if you serve these types to your guests.

Common mushrooms used for cooking are often commercially grown rather than picked wild. These types of mushroom include the common white mushroom, the chanterelle, the shitake, and the truffle, which is highly prized by the chefs at high end restaurant franchises in Canada. Certain other mushrooms, such as the Finnish false morel, can only be eaten if they have been parboiled (pre-cooked or leeched) and are toxic if eaten raw. Therefore you should be careful when getting creative with mushroom dishes and always follow package directions.

Of those mushrooms which are not edible as food, many others are useful in the preparation of medicines. Psilocybe (or hallucinogenic) mushrooms can be harvested into medicine to help obsessive compulsive and migraine prone people focus on their house plans. Some polysaccharide mushrooms inhibit tumor growth, others are used to make antibiotics, and still others show the ability to reduce inflammation, kill parasites, and even temper diabetes. Other uses for mushrooms include making fabric dye (some mushrooms, such as the lactarius indigo, are quite vibrant) , fire starting (primarily the tinder fungus), bioremediation, and processing into environmentally friendly packaging.