Many a fairy tale has included members of the Fungi kingdom as part of the backdrop. Yes, mushrooms are members of the Fungi kingdom.
People often shutter when they hear the word 'fungi'.
It brings up images of some life forms taking over a university student's refrigerator, athletes foot, dirty showers or maybe a yeast infection. There are more than 100,000 different species of fungi, some beneficial to man, some not. Some are edible, some poisonous, some produce visions and some have strong medicinal properties. In the Western world, medicinal mushrooms have not played as much a central role as they have in Asian culture. We can find references in Western culture for medicinal mushrooms as far back as 455 B.C. with Hippocrates' use of them.