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A shitty what!?!?
Cropper of memes
We don’t know. The original author died from eating a false brown cap before he could finish his guide 😞
My friend forages for porcini mushrooms out near Tahoe. I thankfully don’t like mushrooms, so he’s not offended when I decline, but idgaf how good he is at finding them, it only takes 1 fuckup and you’re dead. He says there’s no mushrooms that look like it and as long as you only look for that one, you’ll be fine. Frankly imo mushrooms are nasty as hell even when you get the kind you know won’t kill you at the store. I have no desire to risk my life to eat wild fungus.
i mean porcinis really are basically impossible to get wrong, presuming it’s the same as here in sweden there is like 1 species that will give you stomach issues and it’s fucking bright red. Again it depends on area but here it’s literally as simple as “if the underside of the hat looks like a sponge, it’s safe to eat” and a proper food-quality species will taste nice and nutty.
IMO the best usage of mushrooms is drying them and putting them in stuff like stew and sauce, either in big chunks so it gets a meat-like texture or ground up to maximize flavour extraction.
Idk if op meant to fearmonger, but mushrooms are hardly ever toxic and hardly ever fatal.
It is now thought that of the approximately 100,000 known fungi species found worldwide, about 100 of them are poisonous to humans.[14] However, by far the majority of mushroom poisonings are not fatal,[15] and the majority of fatal poisonings are attributable to the Amanita phalloides mushroom
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mushroom_poisoning
That said, definitely be safe and if you arent sure, dont eat it.
I’m less interested in the total number of species, and more interested in my likelihood of holding one
Don’t munch on a hunch
Yep. Years ago I interviewed someone for a radio program here in the Netherlands. This was a forest ranger, on the topic of people foraging for mushrooms. It was the hip thing to do at the time.
He explained how wildly dangerous it is for average people to do. Especially when looking up things online.
He showed me two images that looked basically identical. He explained to me that one mushroom was edible and delicious. And that it could be found in the forests in the United States. The other, identical looking mushroom can be found in European forests. That one liquifies your internal organs and causes you to shit yourself to an agonising death.
He explained that each year a handful of people die from eating it. Because they looked up a guide online, and failed to understand that there’s regional differences between edible and deadly mushrooms. And by the time they got medical attention, there was nothing that could be done.
I’m not a fan of mushrooms anyway, but I’d certainly never be dumb enough to go pick some myself. That shit’ll get you killed.
I just buy them in a growkit, that way they are fun an enjoyable
I will never understand impulsive people who just DO things, with little thought or worry of consequences.
In France you can take them to a pharmacy and they will be able to determine the mushrooms for you
It’s very trusting to let a professional from an unrelated profession make life or death decisions for you
It’s part of their education, not only what is edible, also what to do/prescribe when mushrooms are ingested that cause malicious symptoms.
So it’s most literally part of their profession.
The local pharmacist in my parent’s village died from accidentally eating poisonous mushrooms ☹️
Should’ve done the French Pharmacists’ education instead :p
You can easily tell them apart by cutting them with a knife: The false brown cap will show a stronger blue discoloration under ultraviolet light if the soil contains manganese at >20% bioavailable water content, and the temperature didn’t drop below 12 degrees Celsius in the past month.
That’s good, I don’t want to bleed out my ass and deserve it.
If you do all the tests and still die bleeding out your ass, they might update the test and rename it after you.
stronger
Spore prints can be useful for identification too
I remember going on a nature walk in Middle School, and our primary stoner/everyone’s future dealer (we’ll call him Nate because that was his name) picked and ate a random mushroom for the lols. I remember spending the entirety of that walk worrying about Nate’s next couple of days. But as you likely pieced together, he was fine, and lived to become everyone’s future dealer.
EDIT: For anyone wondering, it was one of those small, skinny, kind of spindly looking mushrooms. Almost like psilocybin but with a flatter cap.
You apparently have a shitty mushroom guide.
Or live in Europe. Seriously, it’s so much harder here, except for 3 or 4 really obvious but not that great tasting ones .
What do you mean? Chanterelles taste great
Don’t be a shitty.
A general rule is if it has pores instead of gills, you’re probably in the clear.
Except for that one in Europe, that shit will megadeath you.
In all seriousness, the general rule I’ve heard for foraging wild unknown things is:
- cut it open and rub it on your skin, wait an hour, if it gives you a reaction, stop here.
- touch it to your lips, wait a while, if it gives you a reaction, stop here
- touch it to your tongue, wait a while, if it gives you a reaction, stop here
- chew a bit and spit it out, wait a while, if it gives you a reaction, stop here
- swallow a small amount, wait a few hours, if it gives you discomfort, stop here
- if you’ve made it this far, it’s likely ok, do so at your own risk tolerance
Roots are generally OK, particularly if you have access to double boil them.
For mushrooms:
- pores are generally safer than gills
- don’t eat it if it’s bioluminescent
- don’t eat if it oxidizes quickly when you cut it open
- don’t eat it if it bruises blue or red
- learn how to detect what a bolete is. Boletes are generally safe, unless it breaks one of the rules above
- Slime: Just say no.
- make sure there’s not a mushroom growing on your mushroom. Double the mushroom is not double the fun.
- learn what a destroying angel looks like, even when it’s young. Appreciate it from a distance, but give that fucker 5 feet of space at all times.
I am by no means an expert. I’m just a rando guy from Appalachia with some wild ass Russian buds and we do some funky shit down here. Take everything I say with as much trust as you give to anyone on the Internet.
When in doubt, take it to an expert and even then, consume at your own risk tolerance.
the general rule is “look up what is 100% safe and trivial to identify with 0 toxic lookalikes in your area, from several sources you trust with your life. Don’t touch anything else out there.”
you’re probably in the clear. Except for that one
Looks like the meme is accurate
All that to find whether a random plant will poison you
Animals are so much easier: is it an animal? It’s good to eat
Oh, my friend, I suggest you look into fugu, mad cow or chronic wasting disease.
Sure. Go for healthy animals. There are also several nasty viruses that have passed from animals to the humans who ate them. But shit happens. Given a random plant or a random animal, I’ll take the animal
There was a guy a few years ago who tried to live off grid. He died, having left behind a journal detailing his final days. In it, he logged the exact process you outlined above for various things he foraged, which included wild potato seeds. Turns out those things pass all the above tests, but contain a deadly neurotoxin that builds up over time (that even modern science didn’t really know about). Poor guy starved because he was too weak to even crawl.
nature be scary fellow humans. Be careful out there.
That some guy ISNT JUST ANY GUY! 😤
- Documentaries were made about him
- A very successful movie was made about him “Into the wild”
- Countless Youtubers keep making videos about him; Thoughty2 made a very good video about him…
He also wandered into the Alaskan wilderness with basically just a sack of rice and a .22lr rifle.
He was a a couple miles from safety the entire time, but did not buy a map so believed he was stranded when the river rose and cut off the main trail. But there was another trail with a raised cable crossing over the river a few miles upstream.
He was totally unprepared and essentially just committed extended suicide. The fact that he remembered some basic tips from a Boy Scout handbook doesn’t mean he was an expert. Kid was an idiot who got in way over his head.
That’s interesting, my general rule for foraging wild unknown things is: don’t.
Imagine dying for a D tier pizza topping
For mushrooms the only good advice is, if you don’t know what you are doing, don’t go foraging for mushrooms. Rules and guidelines that apply for one region might not work for another. The risk reward never works out if you’re inexperienced. You either get a tasty treat or incurable certain death. It’s not a great gamble.
You either get a
tasty treatbland, mild dirt flavor or incurable certain death.FTFY
Sure, and I suppose you’re going to advise me not to do my own electrical home wiring either. 😛
If you’re even half competent, you could (not recommended) actually do some basic electrical work at home and come out of it alive and well after a few youtube videos and some reasonable precautions. I can’t same the same about mushroom foraging.
People are shocked when they find out how bad I am at electrical work!
Here’s a general rule for foraging mushrooms; don’t use “general rules”.
Also; “don’t eat it if it bruises blue”, you’ll miss out on all the fun ones with this advice.
Yeah, atleast here in northern part of europe we have multiple shrooms that bruise blue and are still edible. I recomend getting a mushroom foraging guide book of your area, and first getting familiar with all the ones that can seriously hurt you.
Except for that one in Europe
Joke, but poisonous mushrooms here are either quite distinct (lol Dickfuss) or give you a mild stomache ache. Well, except the section with mushrooms that look like a poisonous variant but aren’t.
Roots might be safe if you can double boil them??? Jesus christ, I guess I’m never touching wild mushrooms ever.
Roots, not mycelium, sorry if that was confusing.
Don’t eat mycelium.
Why shouldn’t we eat mycelium?
it’s like eating random meat from the ground, it’s impossible for you to know what the fuck species it is or even if it’s all a single species.
The confusion was mostly on me as I mistook double boiling to mean boiling twice but thank you for the clarification anyway.
No you were right, it does mean boiling twice, much like you would do for cassavas.
don’t eat it if it bruises blue
Or do if you’re up for an interesting time and it passes the test above. Eat about three grams for some nice sights and 6 before sitting in a dark, cool room to meet something unknown
I don’t think there are any harmful mushrooms that bruise blue but would love for an expert to chime in here
Rubroboletus satanas is definitely poisonous. On the other hand, Imleria badia is very good. Bruising blue doesn’t really say anything about edibility.
I’m not an expert, though.
If it bruises blue, cut off a very thin slice from the center of the stalk and put it on agar until it creates mycellium. There’s some other stuff you need after that which I’ll be happy to help you with.
Do you mean ‘pores instead of gills’ ? I think all mushrooms produce spores, no?
The mushrooms from the bolete family here in Germany often stain blue (or some other color) when bruised but most are very good mushrooms for eating. For example, Imleria badia, Neoboletus erythropus and Suillus grevillei. The last one is even slimy but you can just remove the cap. (There is also this really tasty gill-having mushroom Lactarius deliciosus that stains green). Also, Armillaria can do bioluminescence but are also edible! I agree with checking for fungi infections of mushrooms and to learn to ID the deadly poisonous Amanita species (funnily enough, there are some really good edible ones in the same genus!).
Your guide to carefully test foraged organisms is definitely helpful. However, when foraging mushrooms you have to keep in mind some additional things. Many, if not most mushrooms are really toxic when eaten raw! People frequently get poisoned while eating edible mushrooms that are not cooked enough. They apparently often contain hemolysins. Also, there are a few tasty mushrooms that can be toxic if eaten in combination with alcohol. If you go foraging mushrooms, better try to learn some groups, how to distinguish them and what are their characteristics than trying to test by your body’s reaction. But yeah, if you were to be without any food in the wild maybe it helps to know how to test for edibility.
FYI you can actually safely lick all mushrooms that we know off. The bad ones will taste bitter if there’s every a confusion between the species. Though if you’re really unsure don’t risk it.
I think there are surprisingly few poisonous ones out there, and fewer that could actually kill somebody.
at least no one ever returning from a forest said a mushroom had killed him.
Yeah, I know, that’s like the first thing they teach you at returning school
