If you spot a mushroom sprouting outside your window, in a pot or on a rock in your garden, nature educator Anjali Tripathi suggests you quell your wish to take the tiny, cute little thing home. “It is almost impossible for a layman to tell if a mushroom is non-venomous. Even if it is, you might be allergic to the spores, the mushroom could be too old to be edible, or delicate; you might not cut it right,” she warns. Instead, she says, learn to grow some at home!

An inedible species of oyster mushrooms in Aarey Forest