Agaricomycetes

Agaricomycetes is a class of fungi within the division Basidiomycota that includes most mushroom forming fungi as well as most species once placed in the older, now abandoned groups Gasteromycetes and Homobasidiomycetes. Within the wider subdivision Agaricomycotina, the class is further distinguished from the jelly fungi classes Tremellomycetes and Dacrymycetes, though a few traditional jelly fungi such as Auricularia are still classified within it. A 2008 estimate placed the class at seventeen orders, one hundred families, 1,147 genera, and about 21,000 species, and later molecular studies have since defined several additional orders within it.