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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.
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
Cool, I think you just saved me a bit of time.
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
If someone goes mushroom gathering multiple times a year, getting to live until 70 speaks volumes about her ability.
Well, she’s not dead yet so that’s a good sign.
Simple, just eat it and see.
If you’re dead, it’s poisonous.
If you are alive, you haven’t eaten enough.Mushroom lesson I did says that looking under the cap, spore color, what tree root system it’s growing in, can give you a really solid ID
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. :)
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.
Nah, but they’re easy for laymen. If you’ve got links to affordable kits for beginners pls share.
Edit: How could I forget. One of my favourite physical food stands at a public market I used to go to sells kits online. They’re good people.
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.
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.
This is the same reason that you never touch something that looks like a carrot plant in the wild
That’s funny. I was just thinking to myself “Fuck all this mushroom noise. I’ll just stick to eating carrots, no way to mistake those for something else.” I guess I’ll die quickly in the coming apocalypse.
This is why we befriend the people who can reliably ID plants and know what is safe to eat, you wouldn’t survive an apocalypse alone regardless.
Mhm, society persists even through collapse scenarios mostly for exactly this reason. John the Butcher in 13th century Scotland might have lost his entire village to The Plague, but those guys in the village 3 miles down the road still have people who know how to forage, or hunt, or grow food, etc etc etc.
yeah do watch out for hemlock plants, they look very similar to wild carrots
“The confusion with parsnips can be fatal as C. maculata is extremely poisonous. It is considered to be North America’s most toxic native plant.”
“The chief poison is cicutoxin, an unsaturated aliphatic alcohol that is most concentrated in the roots. Upon human consumption, nausea, vomiting, and tremors occur within 30–60 minutes, followed by severe cramps, projectile vomiting, and convulsions.”
It supposedly tastes good though.
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.
Oh my, the mechanism of action on that is essentially the opposite of alchohol/benzos and would feel like going through the DTs. That’s a very unfun way to go. Interestingly, a suggestive treatment would be benzos/getting blind drunk.
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.
“Destroying Angel” is an incredibly metal name for a mushroom lmao.
My wife wanted to take a foraging class and I pointed out all the similarities and said to her, if you don’t want to buy mushrooms from the store, we can just grow them.
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.
Is Hutler the son from Jabba the Hut?
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.
Explaining someone’s point to someone else who missed it is a pendantry it seems.
Okay, Brown Ben Plumm.
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.
Exactly. Don’t trust a stranger on the internet to help you avoid death.
But do go to that really famous Facebook group if you suspect a poisoning for help with an ID. They’ve got a ton of experts and doctors use them lol.
Yeah those groups are great. I like the snake bite one also.
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.
Easiest way to not die from bad mushrooms is to not eat them because they’re fucking disgusting anyways
You’re technically correct on one point, and totally entitled to your opinion on the other. But brown mushrooms (not from a can) sauteed into a hamburger steak gravy will kick it up about 14 notches, give or take.
I absolutely hated mushrooms my whole life because of a miserable first experience with them on pizza. The pizza place must have used the absolute worst, flavorless, slimiest canned mushrooms in the world. The were rubbery and disgusting. I was like 8 years old and refused to eat them until about five years ago.
I had the most wonderful ramen at a restaurant recommended by my friends and it had shiitake mushrooms in it. I explained my aversion and they encouraged me to try it and my god the difference was incredible. I absolutely love shiitake now but I totally understand people who don’t like them
Yeah, the sponge underside mushrooms are boletes, and I am not aware of any that are poisonous.
There are some that are, and they can be hard to identify as well. Still a good idea to never eat what you find unless you’re with an experienced mushroomer to corroborate your find.
“How can I know they’re an experienced mushroomed?” “Well, for one… they’re not dead.”
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.
Neural networks are magical anywhere that near misses are good enough.
Companies keep using them as if they’re infallible, when lives and fortunes are at stake.
Tech is not the problem.
Tech is ravenously trying to convince the world they need AI for every aspect of their business. Tech wants you to think LLMs are infallible and they strongly imply that they are even if the fine print says otherwise. So personally I would say tech is very much part of the problem. One could say they are the root of the problem in fact.
I think he’s referring to literal technology itself as “Tech” and you’re referring to the people trying to sell it as “Tech”—aka “Big-Tech” as some would say
Yup, sounds like a classic miscommunication. I think we should all compromise and just agree capitalism is the problem lol.
I think you’re bang on with that. My bad.
I don’t think the tech is the problem, it’s the business drones trying to sell you it
The tech is not the problem.
If you give out hammers to everyone, some people will end up with smashed balls.
Yeah, I have to agree with you. For example, I would have no problem using a decently tested LLMs for engineering simply because Engineering usually accounts for errors and uses appropriate factors to accommodate them. Sure LLMs could be get more accurate in future, but I believe the error will reduce asymptotically. Essentially, more accurate LLMs get, it will get that much harder to increase the accuracy. There is always a price to pay, IMO.
“There’s always a price to pay” is basically what engineering is.
Anybody could build a bridge to last 100 years, or to survive a barge ship crashing into it, but it takes an engineer to build a bridge that will barely last 100 years, or barely survive a bridge crashing into it (which you could kind of say the F.S.Key bridge did, since only really the middle section was taken out).
Put another way, in the real world, there are budgets and sacrifices.
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.
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
Fungi are fascinating. Did you know that, if I’m recalling correctly, the largest living organism is a massive fungus?
And reindeer are trained to follow the smell of human piss because they like tripping on amanita muscaria, which transfers its psychoactive compounds through urine.
Wacky!
It’s not the shared root system tree in North America? I could totally see it being a mushroom.
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.
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Along with a pot of honey as a tithing.
you came to a deleted post hours later just to add a racist redditism?
How is that racism?
you know who this asian man reminds me of? yellow cartoon character. how is that racist btw?
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Once.
They said you die one or two days after eating. You could definitely eat more than once in that time.
Then you would reset the count, so as ling as you don’t stop eating it you can eat an infinite amount
If you eat fast enough, maybe twice!
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 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.
Yeah, it’s a very common joke which I argue does not work because despite the fact that there is leeway in how words are defined (that’s kind of what my entire comment is about) there is no valid definition of edible which includes mushrooms that definitely kill you if you eat them.
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A bollard isn’t edible, even once.
Only once. ;)
You can do anything once.
Don’t tempt me with a good time.
Which mushroom is it then? 😱
Destroying Angel
No joking around when it came to naming it.
Sounds safe and yummy!
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
The symptoms can even disappear after some time, so you think you’ll be fine and then you experience a second onset that kills you.
My fucked up brain goes like, “woah, I wonder what death tastes like.”
Probably bitter and followed by a slow agonizing death by liver failure.
As somebody who has been through liver failure and transplant, it really sucks. I do not recommend it.
Wikipedia says the death cap tastes quite pleasing, reportedly.
Someones’ last words
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 kissAnd a tiny bit of white wine, and some salt. Freaking delicious.
2 mushrooms hard to fuck up in America.
I remember selling like 5 lbs of morels when I was a kid and getting like $200. That was without even driving to the city to make the real money.
note that chicken of the woods may give about 50% of people horrible nausea for several hours
Sure, if you’re weak. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laetiporus
It’s not near 50% of people though.
It seems I misremembered this story that I read years ago after eating some and feeling queasy for several hours:
To add a caveat, in 2004 when the current edition of the Encyclopedia of Fungi was launched at a National Trust property, to which 60 journalists were invited for lunch, there was an incident involving this species. On the day before, we had found a specimen of Laetiporus sulphureus in prime condition, on Oak, which was collected and incorporated, lightly sauteed, as part of the meal.
Approximately half an hour after ingestion, 6 of the 60 journalists became violently ill – vomiting, cyanosed, sweating, icy cold, with raised pulse, and very frightened. The remaining 54 suffered no ill effects.
The doctor who attended diagnosed a severe allergic reaction and the symptoms subsided after about 2 hours.
Subsequent investigation turned up research by a US-based toxicology team at the University of Berkeley, California. It had concluded that 10% of the people taking part in extensive trials, suffered these severe effects. Our experience was exactly in line with this figure.
It’s also worth bearing in mind that Laetiporus sulphureus growing on Taxus hosts, is potentially lethal.
https://blog.mycology.cornell.edu/2006/10/31/eating-the-chicken-of-the-woods/
Chicken of the Woods is the shit!!!
What, a wood pilz that is edible?
There are also mushrooms that look like morels that you shouldn’t eat. Somewhat easy to filter out if you know what you’re looking for but maybe wouldn’t say hard to fuck up.
Can you show me some that would grow in the same areas next to dead elms? I’m unfamiliar with any and I’ve foraged for them a lot.
E: Looks like this has some info on False Morels further below. I’d have a difficult time mistaking one for the other myself but eh?
I think some people want to find morels so bad they get a sort of “buck fever” and convince themselves they’ve found one. That’s all I can imagine because to my eyes they would be hard to mix up. Same with chanterelle and false chanterelle. Like… sure, I guess if you are profoundly incautious.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6hA0wqLVkY - True vs False Chanterelle for the curious.
I’m not informed enough to answer any of your questions about them. You should find a better source than my fuzzy memory. I just remember being warned about them since morel picking is fairly popular around where I live.
I remember being on a wilderness weekend many years ago and being told that when you cut the stem on some poisonous shrooms they discolour a sort of blue tint. I’m lucky, I hate the taste and texture of mushrooms.
I remember years ago reading you can tell if a mushroom is “magic” by blotting it on paper towel and seeing if it stains blue or purple. Unfortunately, that is also how many things say you can tell it’s toxic. Maybe you’ll trip balls. Maybe you’ll die. 🤷🏻♂️
Maybe you’ll trip balls and THEN die!
Win win
I wouldn’t be surprised if the poison and the psychoactive part are the same thing in different doses, or just function similarly.
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From what I heard in the past magic mushrooms are just mild food poisoning
you have heard wrong.
Mild food poisoning makes your tummy hurt and you feel a bit nauseous.
Magic mushrooms, depending on the dose, will either make you wonder the meaning of life or will bring god directly to you to ask, all the whilst fractals and wild shapes pulsate within the details of patterns.
Mushroom haters unite!
Those things scare me.
They don’t scare me I just cannot stand the taste and texture. It actually makes me want to vomit.
Which makes you scared of them, perhaps.
Also, have you seen how mycelium works and so on, the biology is amazing, but it’s also scary.
I mean it’s not all the mushrooms that give me that reaction. I am 100% not scared of them. If I had nothing else to eat and was starving I would suffer through it. But I don’t.
I have not seen how it works. Got any good links?
I only watched a documentary by public German media, sorry.
Ah okay then
I love all that side of it myself. Used to photo the wild fungus down here.
Funny you say this, there is actually a mushroom that does this color change but is edible. Allegedly doesn’t taste very good, though.
Best not to eat any wild mushrooms at all unless a verified mycologist can look at them first.
Scarletina bolete apparently tastes relatively decent. I haven’t tried it myself though.
I hate every mushroom I have ever tried- except shiitake mushrooms, which don’t taste like mushrooms and are amazing.
I’m literally 100% the opposite. Give me some morels, porcini, lions mane… anything but shiitake.
Sounds like we like/dislike them for the same reasons.
Does it grow in shiit? 😅
Moost of your fooood dooes.
“Just off for a shiit, mate!”
Adds this to the big list of horrible ways to die
I wonder if it fits above or bellow the Demon Core.
At least looks like this is quicker.
I’ll take deadly mushroom over radiation poisoning any day. Melted liver is better than melted skin.
I remember reading Hiroshima, I don’t ever want the skin surround my hand to slough off
Thank fuck I don’t eat mushrooms
Darwin machine
