"Pecherytsia" or champignon: are they the same thing?

When buying “champignons” at the store, few people remember that they're simply *pecherytsia* — the same genus of mushrooms (Agaricus), only domesticated. Two names, one mushroom.

Where the two names come from

• *Pecherytsia* is the native Ukrainian name for the whole genus Agaricus, both wild and cultivated species.
• *Shampinion* is a borrowing from French (*champignon* simply means “mushroom”), which in Ukraine stuck to the cultivated, store-bought kind.

So the correct Ukrainian word is *pecherytsia*. *Shampinion* is the same *pecherytsia*, just grown in a greenhouse.

Wild Agaricus vs store-bought

The store-bought kind is mostly the button mushroom, grown under controlled conditions. In the wild there's a whole family of wild Agaricus species: the field mushroom, the horse mushroom, the blushing wood mushroom. They're tastier and more fragrant, but you need to know how to identify them. For a full overview, see our piece on Agaricus species.

The main danger of wild Agaricus

You can't mistake the store-bought kind for anything — it's safe. But **a young white wild Agaricus is easy to confuse with the deadly death cap**. Two features will save you:

• Agaricus gills turn pink, then brown; in the death cap they're always white;
• at the base of an Agaricus stem there is no volva and no bulb, while the death cap has them.

We've written in detail about how to tell Agaricus from the death cap in a separate article. Also avoid any Agaricus that turns sharply yellow when broken and smells unpleasant.

Sources

• “Identification Guide to the Fungi of Ukraine” (Kyiv, Naukova Dumka publishing house).
• Agaricus bisporus and Agaricus campestris in GBIF, the global biodiversity database.
• Agaricus on Wikipedia.