A fruiting body is generally what you would visually recognize as a mushroom. It is fleshy, contains spores, and grows above ground or directly on the surface of its host, like a tree or old log. The mushroom’s fruiting body comprises a stem, cap, and gills, which are what the general populace would eat in a culinary dish, but in nature, it acts primarily as the reproductive component of a fungal system, dispersing spores and inoculating hosts. Not all mushrooms have a fruiting body.