Looking over the wikipedia page on this mushroom and all the similar, very edible ones…Yeah I’m never foraging mushrooms.
Yeah, I carefully read the description of its distinguishing features, studied the photo, and concluded I have no idea what I’m looking at and how to tell them apart.
- ulterno ( @ulterno@lemmy.kde.social ) English7•6 months ago
Simple, just eat it and see.
If you’re dead, it’s poisonous.
If you are alive, you haven’t eaten enough.
Is the main visual difference just the stem or whatever it’s called being much longer?
IIRC, the only definitive way to ID mushrooms is by making a spore print - and even then you need to know what you’re doing.
Just doesn’t seem worth the risk to me.
nah it’s generally fairly easy to ID mushrooms, the problem is just that if you miss a feature and mistake it for another, you’ll fucking liquidize from the inside out.
This is the same reason that you never touch something that looks like a carrot plant in the wild, because it could be that one plant that kills you 3 times over.
I agree that it’s generally not worth the risk though, hence why those who pick mushrooms (which is pretty standard to do here in the nordics) stick to like 5 species who have no dangerous lookalikes and actually taste good and are easy to find.
Here in sweden 90% of what people pick is chanterelles or boletes, whose entire families look effectively the same and at worst simply don’t taste good. Boletes have ONE slightly toxic species in sweden, and it’s bright red and only grows on one island in the baltic sea.
If anyone is curious about the carrot mention, Google where the phrase “Sardonic Grin” came from.
Huh. I was thinking Aconitum species when they mentioned carrots.
Sardonic grin just mentions strychnine poisoning, which comes from a tree.
Ah, yes. My mistake, did not read the entire wikipedia article there for sardonic grin.
never touch something that looks like a carrot plant in the wild, because it could be that one plant that kills you 3 times over.
Okay so when you said “Never touch” I was thinking casually “Oh, don’t go messing with it or munching on it or whatever. Sound advice.”
Looking it up, oh…poison hemlock…you were being dead-exact.
“As his doctor, Christopher Hayner, MD, pointed out, LeBlond didn’t have to eat the poisonous plant to fall ill. “Anything you can touch, you can also inhale,” he explained to Good Housekeeping. When LeBlond used a chainsaw to cut down the hemlock, tiny particles scattered in the air, and when he breathed them in, they almost killed him.”
Oh holy crap.
Kill it with fire!“If you do find a suspicious stalk and want to remove it, wear gloves, a face mask, and protective clothing. Dig it out from the roots, rather than cutting it, and never burn it, as the fumes can cause a reaction.”
Not even fire can sate its lust for indiscriminate killing?!
Apparently it’s a “recent problem” that this stuff is spreading all over the place.
It was as I suspected. Going outside is overrated. 😬
This is untrue. Spore print can be useful for some very similar species or when you are first learning but I’ve been picking and eating wild mushrooms for about 15 years now and I basically never do a spore print anymore. Once you learn it’s pretty unnecessary. The ones I pick are easy to ID anyway. Most people can learn to identify them fairly quickly with some instruction though I have noticed that some people lack the attention to detail to be good at it.
Yah – and to add certain edible mushrooms or families of mushrooms are very distinctive (e.g. hedgehog fungi in the UK), and I would recommend novices start out with. Others I wouldn’t touch with a barge pole even if I was relatively confident with an id, purely because it isn’t worth the risk (e.g. miller Vs fools funnel).
Perhaps I should have said ‘categorically’ instead of ‘definitively’, but they are synonyms so…
I’m not sure I understand the distinction you are making here but I wouldn’t say it’s the only way to categorically identify mushrooms either. It is one tool among many, and one that is typically used with unfamiliar mushrooms, not those that a person is already familiar with.
Basically if you are not sure what you have it can help narrow down the possibilities. But typically if you are picking mushrooms to eat you are (or should be) already certain of what you have. I can’t think of a single scenario where spore prints would be the easiest way to distinguish similar edible and poisonous mushrooms. There are many other features that are more readily examined and spore prints are mainly for separating more distinct types of mushrooms from one another anyway.
I’m UK based so not hugely familiar with US mushrooms, but I seem to recall a spore print being useful for checking for false parasol? Though it’s not the most obvious (e.g. snakeskin markings for distinguishing from parasol).
Btw I totally agree with your general point (I never use them, except to produce pretty spore prints for friends).
Lots of differences but the simplest one would be that button mushrooms would typically have color to their gills—depending on the species they usually start out pinkish or pale brown and move to dark brown as they get older. Destroying angel has pure white gills.
But button mushrooms are actually not very beginner friendly despite their familiarity since there are other poisonous lookalikes in many areas.
The two mentioned species are pretty easy to distinguish once you get familiar with them (based on gills, spores and the stem base). But I would never rely on an app to make the decision for me! If you exclusively go for easier groups where there are no life threatening species in your area (boletes where I life), you should be pretty safe.
Looks like a destroying angel (e.g. Amanita virosa) to me. This and the death cap together account for the vast majority of mushroom poisonings in the world. Cooking it will not destroy the toxins, nor will acid. Symptoms tend to appear 5-24 hours after eating, too late to pump the stomach. Half a mushroom can be enough to kill you.
I don’t recommend going out to pick mushrooms unless you know what you’re doing. If you do, stay away from the white ones. You can still get terrible stomach cramps and diarrhea from other colors of mushrooms, but the white ones have the most dangerous species.
Easiest way to avoid problems I’ve heard is to never pick any mushroom with ribbed underside. If the underside looks like a sponge, it’s usually safe to eat. At least where I’m from.
Might be valid advice for some regions, I don’t know. But mushrooms tend to vary quite a bit in appearance. Sometimes ribbed species don’t have very visible ribs, or younger mushrooms don’t quite have all the characteristics of their mature form. If you really want to get into picking mushrooms, there’s often local groups you can join with a resident expert who can tell you which ones are safe.
Rule of thumb with mushrooms is that these id tricks tend to be regional and not always accurate unfortunately. Nature is a bit more of a kaleidoscope.
It’s mostly true. Most of the poisonous mushrooms of central Europe are not “sponges”.
The worst one I have found once is seldom lethal: Rubroboletus satanas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubroboletus_satanas
I guess people don’t usually pick stuff that looks like that. Though there are similar ones that taste pretty good.
Toxic boletus usually taste really bad.
What about a base?
Not sure about this one, but acid resistance is pretty relevant because of the typical stomach environment. In general, amatoxins are just very stable and it’s difficult to deactivate them.
They sound a bit like prions in that way lol
i don’t think you want to eat it after that anyways.
There are old mushroom foragers and then there are bold ones. There are no bold, old mushroom foragers.
I love fungi facts.
This guy sees the most terrifying description of a toxin killing someone and goes “Yep, that’s a fun mushroom facto”
To be fair, that is basically what’s to be expected from myshrooms
this guy so into mushrooms they added myco to their mushrooms (myshroom) for more mushroom per mushroom
Deleted
Once.
If you eat fast enough, maybe twice!
Only once. ;)
My fucked up brain goes like, “woah, I wonder what death tastes like.”
Saute in a pan with butter and garlic. Death will taste fabulous.
Little salt, little pepper. /
chef’sdeath’s kissThat’s cheating. Anything will taste great with butter and garlic.
Which mushroom is it then? 😱
Destroying Angel
Thank fuck I don’t eat mushrooms