cap is convexSome grocery stores in the Western world sell this mushroom in canned and fresh preparations. An agaric, its gills are often left on in preparations. It can be found cooked on pizzas and casseroles, stuffed mushrooms, raw on salads, and in various forms in a variety of dishes. Some mycologists, including Paul Stamets, have raised concerns that this mushroom contains trace quantities of a chemical agaritine known to have carcinogenic properties, though whether levels are sufficient to cause harm in consumers is debated.[1]
The cultivated mushroom is a member of the large genus Agaricus, which has numerous members which are edible, tasty and collected worldwide. The next best-known is the commonly collected wild mushroom (A. campestris), known in North America as the meadow mushroom or field mushroom in England and Australia. This can be found throughout much of the United States and Europe.
The common mushroom has a complicated taxonomic history. It was first described as a variety (var. hortensis) of A. campestris in 1884, before Danish mycologist Jakob Emanuel Lange reviewed the cultivated form, naming it as a variety Psalliota hortensis var. bispora in 1926, its epithet derived from its two-spored basidia (as distinct from other members of the genus which had four-spored basidia). Mõller and Schäffer raised the mushroom to species status as Psalliota bispora in 1938. It was given its current binomial name of Agaricus bisporus by Emil J. Imbach upon the renaming of Psalliota to Agaricus in 1946.[2]
