Chantarelles do not have true gills, that’s true. I was just trying to be simple with the description of gills. But you’re absolutely right that truffles are not mushrooms either. They’re an entirely different type of sporocarp.
Taxonomically speaking, though, they’re still basidiomycota, same as the “true” gilled mushrooms. I think any reasonable definition of mushroom someone could come up with is going to be para- or polyphyletic and it doesn’t hurt to lump in morels, even if they are in a completely different phylum.
Mycologists would avoid the term in formal communication entirely; the terms of art would be Basidiocarp for basids and Ascocarp for ascos, or sporocarp generally. In less formal communication my experience has been that mushroom is used as a colloquial stand-in for any sort of macroscopic sporocarp. Linguistic prescriptivism can be fun (“Hey guys - did you a tomato is actually a berry?!”) but the stipe-pileus-hymenium model of a mushroom is so narrowly defined I don’t know of anyone who could legitimately stick to it without slipping up at some point.
A gills or pores criterion would exclude mushrooms such as truffles and chanterelles (which have tubes or teeth).
Chantarelles do not have true gills, that’s true. I was just trying to be simple with the description of gills. But you’re absolutely right that truffles are not mushrooms either. They’re an entirely different type of sporocarp.
Taxonomically speaking, though, they’re still basidiomycota, same as the “true” gilled mushrooms. I think any reasonable definition of mushroom someone could come up with is going to be para- or polyphyletic and it doesn’t hurt to lump in morels, even if they are in a completely different phylum.
I’m not a biologist or anything, all I know is that mycologists do not consider morels or truffles to be mushrooms.
Mycologists would avoid the term in formal communication entirely; the terms of art would be Basidiocarp for basids and Ascocarp for ascos, or sporocarp generally. In less formal communication my experience has been that mushroom is used as a colloquial stand-in for any sort of macroscopic sporocarp. Linguistic prescriptivism can be fun (“Hey guys - did you a tomato is actually a berry?!”) but the stipe-pileus-hymenium model of a mushroom is so narrowly defined I don’t know of anyone who could legitimately stick to it without slipping up at some point.
Good to know. I’ll just keep my fun facts in the trivia zone.