agaric

Any of various fungi, principally of the order Agaricales, having fruiting bodies consisting of umbrella-like caps, on stalks, with numerous gills beneath.

[…] these [commentators] were slight excrescences, mushrooms, champignons, that perished as the smoke of the dunghil evaporated, which reared them. A modern editor of Shakespeare is, on the contrary, a fungus attached to an oak; a male agaric of the most astringent kind, that, while it disfigures its form, may last for ages to disgrace the parent of its being.

Nobody cares for planting the poor fungus: so she shakes down from the gills of one agaric countless spores, any one of which, being preserved, transmits new billions of spores to-morrow or next day.

A dried fruiting body of a fungus formerly used in medicine (now Laricifomes officinalis, formerly Fomitopsis officinalis, Fomes officinalis, Polyporus officinalis).

Agarick to purge his flegme, lest he be too drowsie