What’s the difference? How can one visually tell the difference?
Also, do toads sit on toadstools? Eat them? Poop them?
There is no difference - at least “mushroom” and “toadstool” are not technical names for what are simply different types of fungi.
“Mushroom” tends to be used for edible fungi, “toadstool” for non-edible, but that doesn’t really help (and in any case, you hear people talk about “poisonous mushrooms”).
Short answers: “there isn’t one”, and “years of practice”. Even different species of the same genus of fungi can differ widely in edibility/toxicity.
The name does come from toad + stool (according to my dictionary), but there is no evidence toads sit on them, or indeed poop them.
Wikipedia says the difference has never been precisely defined, or agreed on.
There is no clear, foolproof visual way to tell a poisonous mushroom from a safe mushroom. This is why it’s not a good idea to pick and eat wild mushrooms unless you know what you are doing.
When I was a kid, I was taught that the ones that come from the supermarket are mushrooms, and the ones in the yard are toadstools. I say this is a useful definition for most of us, as most people shouldn’t be picking mushrooms anywhere other than the grocery store.
Toadstool simply means non-edible, hence probably poisonous mushroom. There’s no neat line other than that. (Note that only some basidiomycetes have mushroom-shaped fruiting bodies; there are lots of fungi which are neither.)
Right. DO NOT DO NOT DO NOT go around eating fungi you found growing if you are not an expert! Danger Will Robinson!
Yes and no. You don’t have to be an expert, but you should stick to the mushrooms you know and be able to distinguish them from their look-alikes. Easy ones for beginning mushroom hunters include morels, chanterelles, and chicken-of-the-woods. Join a local mushroom picking club to get the basics, and stick to what you know. Anyone can learn to safely identify these mushrooms without being a trained mycologist, and morel hunting is not an uncommon activity for casual mushroomers.