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.
Simple, just eat it and see.
If you’re dead, it’s poisonous.
If you are alive, you haven’t eaten enough.I’m really good at spotting differences or inconsistencies, I’m totally lost with mushrooms though, and I go multiple times every Autumn with a woman in her 70’s. She is very clear about what we are looking for. She throws out at least half of what I gather.
She does that cause she’s jealous of how many you pick
with a woman in her 70’s
Do these conditions have anything to do with a person’s ability to identify mushrooms
Very likely. Experience is a thing
If she’s that old and likes to forage there’s only so many bad mushrooms you can eat
Also, women tend to have better natural color distinction, they more prominently have a genetic mutation that adds a 4th color cone.
Additionally men are significantly more likely to have some form of colorblindness.
Age also can have an effect on your perception of the world as well as the objective quality of your vision.
Finally, describing the subject of the sentence is normal.
I didn’t know most of that, cool
Well, she’s not dead yet so that’s a good sign.
If someone goes mushroom gathering multiple times a year, getting to live until 70 speaks volumes about her ability.
chanterelles are pretty safe to forage if they grow near you.
they are very distinct looking.
egg mushrooms 😋
They are so goddamned good, I highly recommend looking around white oak trees by carefully clearing away the leaf litter a few days after it rains. They can’t really be bought in stores and when they do show up they’re like $50 a pound because you can’t really farm them as they have a symbiotic relationship with only certain trees and are very vulnerable to other fungus like mold.
Where I live (mountainous region in Austria) they are everywhere. I just go hiking for a bit so I’m at not too frequented spots and then I can just pick as many as I need, often the floor nearly is more yellow than brown on certain spots.
We don’t have white oaks here but they typically grow in needle forests.
(And we call them Eierschwammerl = egg mushrooms, to explain my previous comment, I just think that sounds much nicer than chanterelles)
Image of a typical spot, took it a month ago ^
Mushroom foraging can be safe, but the rules are:
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Always learn from a local guide first. It’s not transferable to other regions. Which makes books a bad way to do it, and the internet a horrible way.
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You don’t rule out dangerous mushrooms, you identify a specific edible mushroom.
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Never trust a little white mushroom.
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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.
And this is why I grow my own. I’m very fond of Albino Texas PE6. Easy to grow, consistent, and you can clone and agar spawn over and over again. Such an aggressive little strain. And looks very distinct. Unmistakable.
There’s nice little kits you can buy online for your kitchen. :)
In my experience, they are quite poor in producing anything worthwhile. Look up the Uncle Ben’s Tek. 90 minute mycology or The Rookie Mycologist have great guides for this, and they’re easy to follow. I’ve gotten amazing results so far.
Those don’t have very good reputations among growers. Bunch of crap you don’t need, and the stuff you do need is garbage quality.
There are old mushroom foragers and then there are bold ones. There are no bold, old mushroom foragers.
There are no bold, old mushroom foragers
Sure there are, they just have to not eat what they picked up.
Source: friend’s mom once gave food poisoning to the whole family by serving them an omelet made with mushrooms she found, but didn’t eat it herself. Fortunately it was merely mushrooms of the “fucks up your stomach” variety.
“Once” has no effect on my statement. There are no Bold, Old mushroom foragers.
In his story, his friend’s mother boldly picked mushrooms from her backyard, cooked them into an omelet for the family, but DID NOT EAT the omelet herself.
Nothing would stop her from growing old while continuing this pattern of bold collecting, although a stint in prison might make for an earlier retirement than expected from the foraging scene.
Is L*mmy more pedantic than r*ddit? Is L*mmy literally H*tler? You decide.
What
Something about Lommy and Raddit or something, idk, ask Hutler.
Man, I’m just trying to figure out why they’re sensoring Lemmy, Reddit, and Hitler all in the same post, and only those three.
One of these things is not like the others 🎶
One of these things is not like the others
Ya, Reddit is the fucking worst.
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.
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.
That’s cheating. Anything will taste great with butter and garlic.
Little salt, little pepper. /
chef’sdeath’s kiss
Technically it’s still edible
Only once. ;)
You can do anything once.
Don’t tempt me with a good time.
Once.
They said you die one or two days after eating. You could definitely eat more than once in that time.
You’d have to use a very strange definition of edible. For something to be edible it does not only need to be able to fit down your throat, it has to be capable of nourishing you without harming you. You can swallow paper and it won’t harm you, but it also can’t nourish you and is thus inedible. You can eat this mushroom and it’ll probably provide some kind of nourishment, but then it will swiftly kill you and thus it is inedible.
I would accept a definition of edible which includes things you can’t digest. For example, gold can also be a food additive referred to by the code E175. Can’t digest it, but it doesn’t hurt you. So I could accept someone referring to gold as edible. But I think the barest, most universal element of something being edible is that it doesn’t kill you. If literal deadly poison is considered edible one must wonder what the word “edible” is even supposed to mean.
Jimmy Neutron “sodium chloride” ass reply, “everything is edible at least once” is a common joke that works precisely because words’ definitions are not rigid
Edit: I think it’s best to leave this comment up as I originally wrote it, but I’m also going to go on the record to say that I could’ve and should’ve phrased this a lot more cordially.
A bollard isn’t edible, even once.
Which mushroom is it then? 😱
Eastern North American Destroying Angel. Half a mushroom is enough to completely destroy your liver and symptoms show up too late to do anything about them
Destroying Angel
No joking around when it came to naming it.
I love fungi facts.
Amanita bisporigera, or the aptly named eastern North American destroying angel, if anyone’s wondering.
From Wikipedia:
The principal amatoxin, α-amanitin, is readily absorbed across the intestine, and 60% of the absorbed toxin is excreted into bile and undergoes enterohepatic circulation; the kidneys clear the remaining 40%. The toxin inhibits the enzyme RNA polymerase II, thereby interfering with DNA transcription, which suppresses RNA production and protein synthesis. This causes cellular necrosis, especially in cells which are initially exposed and have rapid rates of protein synthesis. This process results in severe acute liver dysfunction and, ultimately, liver failure.
I could not confirm that it causes liquefactive necrosis of the liver specifically, however. I wouldn’t doubt it, but I couldn’t confirm it.
Edit: I should clarify, I got this from the original thread on Bluesky, not my own identification.
ooh, amanita
i didnt even consider that this AI shit was going to claim to be able to ID mushroomsok ive been a little skeptical of the idea so far but now im fully convinced. this dumb ai shit is going to get people killed. like straight up more than one person is going to die because of these upjumped autocorrects masquerading as intelligence. and no one is going to be held responsible.
