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Several comments here advise getting a good mushroom identification book instead of relying on plant id apps for foraging. Do you have any recommendations? And more generally, how would you go about assessing the trustworthiness of any such book?
I've been foraging mushrooms for 30+ years, and I triple-check every single specimen before cooking it. The idea of a novice forager using an app to identify mushrooms is... unconscionable! Like... breathtakingly stupid. I've commented on this before, but it continues to baffle me how poorly-educated our public is about wild plants, berries, and mushrooms. And stories like this just perpetuate the fear (and stigma?)…
Which method do you use for checking the mushrooms?
books with photos, very in-depth descriptions, pictures and descriptions sent to friends who also forage, and when all else fails, spore samples.
I've only had to make it to spore samples 6-7 times because I couldn't identify with the first three methods. I will note that I never ate any of the ones I took spore samples of - because I was then able to correctly identify them as poisonous (or close enough that I wasn't willing to take the chance).
I've been foraging mushrooms for 30+ years, and I triple-check every single specimen before cooking it. The idea of a novice forager using an app to identify mushrooms is... unconscionable! Like... breathtakingly stupid. I've commented on this before, but it continues to baffle me how poorly-educated our public is about wild plants, berries, and mushrooms. And stories like this just perpetuate the fear (and stigma?)…
It's not like they're chocolate.
I've been foraging mushrooms for 30+ years, and I triple-check every single specimen before cooking it. The idea of a novice forager using an app to identify mushrooms is... unconscionable! Like... breathtakingly stupid. I've commented on this before, but it continues to baffle me how poorly-educated our public is about wild plants, berries, and mushrooms. And stories like this just perpetuate the fear (and stigma?)…
I've only eaten wild mushrooms once. They were picked by a friend I trusted who had been picking them for 20+ years, and he ate them at the same time I did. He damn sure was not using an app on his phone to identify them.
I've been foraging mushrooms for 30+ years, and I triple-check every single specimen before cooking it. The idea of a novice forager using an app to identify mushrooms is... unconscionable! Like... breathtakingly stupid. I've commented on this before, but it continues to baffle me how poorly-educated our public is about wild plants, berries, and mushrooms. And stories like this just perpetuate the fear (and stigma?)…
I've been foraging mushrooms for 30+ years, and I triple-check every single specimen before cooking it. The idea of a novice forager using an app to identify mushrooms is... unconscionable! Like... breathtakingly stupid. I've commented on this before, but it continues to baffle me how poorly-educated our public is about wild plants, berries, and mushrooms. And stories like this just perpetuate the fear (and stigma?)…
Curiosity: do you find that you (at 30+ years) are so good at identification in the wild that you don’t find any “bad” specimens once you get them home, or do you still catch some outliers where you needed to look at them more closely? Or does the process involve taking them home for closer examination?
The other thing is that the truly deadly varieties, such as the subject of this article - Amanita phalloides, are really not that hard to avoid. When you're a novice forager, there are plenty of varieties that don't look remotely like Amanita, and are much easier to differentiate.
There are some hardcore foragers who even consume certain varieties of Amanita (some of which are edible!), but to me this would be too much of a hassle, since it would involve spore prints and maybe even microscopy of the spores to be absolutely sure.
> When the app matched his photos of the backyard mushrooms with an edible species, [...] it almost killed him. Now there's an app that'd have to be designed very conscientiously.
I'll just stick to distinguishing a '67 from a '68 Mustang.
Since no one has done it yet, I'll ask the obvious question about the FDA: how many people die or need a liver transplant each year because the FDA is being unreasonable here? Here's some quotes from the article: Approximately 40% of people who ingest the deadly Amanita mushrooms die or require a liver transplant, according to Dr. Pierre Gholam, the liver specialist at University Hospitals who treated Hickman. ... Th…
By keeping stock centralized at the FDA they can keep enough on hand and rubber stamp the exception.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's no wiggle room. You need to be 1000% certain of identification, if you decide to eat a mushroom. That's how I've been doing it for the last decade. I forage a lot of mushrooms, but don't consume anything I'm not sure of. Also, there are "beginner" mushrooms, that don't have any dangerous look-alikes, such as the famous "chicken of the woods" (laetiporus sulphureus). You can't really go wrong with mushroom lik…
My farmers' market has a mushroom guy that brings in things that I've never seen before. Some of them get expensive and a few I've found rather unpleasant. There is absolutely no way that I could find these things myself, so I would suggest a dealer like this if you are in an area large enough to support one. This is the dealer at my market: https://www.wildgrowthgourmetmushrooms.com/
I've been foraging mushrooms for 30+ years, and I triple-check every single specimen before cooking it. The idea of a novice forager using an app to identify mushrooms is... unconscionable! Like... breathtakingly stupid. I've commented on this before, but it continues to baffle me how poorly-educated our public is about wild plants, berries, and mushrooms. And stories like this just perpetuate the fear (and stigma?)…
Which method do you use for checking the mushrooms?
When you get to know the specific bits of anatomy of the mushroom body, the trees with which they're symbiotic, the seasons in which they occur, etc., then identifying different varieties becomes as clear as identifying a baseball vs. a tennis ball.