Fungi are neither plants nor animals but belong to their own kingdom. They are unable to produce their own food through the process of photosynthesis, as plants do; instead, they acquire nutrients from living or dead plants, animals, or other fungi, as animals do. In many larger fungi (lichens excepted) the only visible parts are the fruit bodies, which arise from a largely unseen network of threads called 'hyphae'. These hyphae permeate the fungus's food source, which may be soil, leaf litter, rotten wood, dung, and so on, depending on the species (4).
The field mushroom has been known since Greek and Roman times, and methods of cultivation were described in the seventeenth century (3). It is sold in northern India as a medicinal fungus. It grows in groups from August to November in Europe and from July to October in North America, and is particularly frequent after rain (3).