fossilesqueMushroom ID
mononomiWhich mushroom is it then? đ±
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 youâll be fine and then you experience a second onset that kills you.
Erika3sis [she/her, xe/xem]Amanita bisporigera, or the aptly named eastern North American destroying angel, if anyoneâs 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 wouldnât doubt it, but I couldnât confirm it.
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 donât recommend going out to pick mushrooms unless you know what youâre 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.
db0Easiest way to avoid problems Iâve heard is to never pick any mushroom with ribbed underside. If the underside looks like a sponge, itâs usually safe to eat. At least where Iâm from.
Might be valid advice for some regions, I donât know. But mushrooms tend to vary quite a bit in appearance. Sometimes ribbed species donât have very visible ribs, or younger mushrooms donât quite have all the characteristics of their mature form. If you really want to get into picking mushrooms, thereâs 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.
MrPoopyButtholeExactly. Donât 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. Theyâve got a ton of experts and doctors use them lol.
Yeah those groups are great. I like the snake bite one also.
Itâs mostly true. Most of the poisonous mushrooms of central Europe are not âspongesâ.
The worst one I have found once is seldom lethal: Rubroboletus satanas en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubroboletus_satanas
I guess people donât usually pick stuff that looks like that. Though there are similar ones that taste pretty good.
Toxic boletus usually taste really bad.
The worst one I have found once is seldom lethal: Rubroboletus satanas en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubroboletus_satanas
I guess people donât usually pick stuff that looks like that. Though there are similar ones that taste pretty good.
Toxic boletus usually taste really bad.
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 youâre with an experienced mushroomer to corroborate your find.
âHow can I know theyâre an experienced mushroomed?â
âWell, for one⊠theyâre not dead.â
Easiest way to not die from bad mushrooms is to not eat them because theyâre fucking disgusting anyways
đŸđđđđ đżđđđYouâre 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 donât like them
ryannathansWhat 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 itâs difficult to deactivate them.
They sound a bit like prions in that way lol
Swednecki donât think you want to eat it after that anyways.
NeatoLooking over the wikipedia page on this mushroom and all the similar, very edible onesâŠYeah Iâm never foraging mushrooms.
Yeah, I carefully read the description of its distinguishing features, studied the photo, and concluded I have no idea what Iâm looking at and how to tell them apart.
Iâm really good at spotting differences or inconsistencies, Iâm totally lost with mushrooms though, and I go multiple times every Autumn with a woman in her 70âs. She is very clear about what we are looking for. She throws out at least half of what I gather.
Cool, I think you just saved me a bit of time.
She does that cause sheâs jealous of how many you pick
with a woman in her 70âs
Do these conditions have anything to do with a personâs ability to identify mushrooms
Very likely. Experience is a thing
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 didnât know most of that, cool
If sheâs that old and likes to forage thereâs only so many bad mushrooms you can eat
If someone goes mushroom gathering multiple times a year, getting to live until 70 speaks volumes about her ability.
Well, sheâs not dead yet so thatâs a good sign.
This.
Iâll just trust the dealer.
ulternoSimple, just eat it and see.
If youâre dead, itâs poisonous.
If you are alive, you havenât eaten enough.
If youâre dead, itâs poisonous.
If you are alive, you havenât eaten enough.
Mushroom lesson I did says that looking under the cap, spore color, what tree root system itâs growing in, can give you a really solid ID
Nakoichi [they/them]chanterelles are pretty safe to forage if they grow near you.
egg mushrooms đ
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 canât really be bought in stores and when they do show up theyâre like $50 a pound because you canât 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 Iâm 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 donât have white oaks here but they typically grow in needle forests.
(And we call them Eierschwammerl = egg mushrooms, to explain my previous comment)
Image of a typical spot, took it a month ago ^
Is the main visual difference just the stem or whatever itâs 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 youâre doing.
Just doesnât seem worth the risk to me.
LibertyLizardThis is untrue. Spore print can be useful for some very similar species or when you are first learning but Iâve been picking and eating wild mushrooms for about 15 years now and I basically never do a spore print anymore. Once your learn itâs 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 â 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 wouldnât touch with a barge pole even if I was relatively confident with an id, purely because it isnât worth the risk (e.g. miller Vs fools funnel).
Perhaps I should have said âcategoricallyâ instead of âdefinitivelyâ, but they are synonyms soâŠ
Iâm not sure I understand the distinction you are making here but I wouldnât say itâs 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.
Iâm 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 itâs 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).
nah itâs generally fairly easy to ID mushrooms, the problem is just that if you miss a feature and mistake it for another, youâll 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 itâs 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 donât taste good. Boletes have ONE slightly toxic species in sweden, and itâs bright red and only grows on one island in the baltic sea.
If anyone is curious about the carrot mention, Google where the phrase âSardonic Grinâ came from.
Huh. I was thinking Aconitum species when they mentioned carrots.
Sardonic grin just mentions strychnine poisoning, which comes from a tree.
No, no. Itâs hemlock.
Ah, yes. My mistake, did not read the entire wikipedia article there for sardonic grin.
Itâs all good. :) I try to hold back links sometimes to encourage people to go look up stuff, both because the curious will and they come back and contribute some new things. Itâs good for conversation. Mistakes are the best way to learn. People are neat.
Oh my, the mechanism of action on that is essentially the opposite of alchohol/benzos. Thatâs a very unfun way to go. Interesting, a suggestive treatment is benzos/getting blind drunk.
This is the same reason that you never touch something that looks like a carrot plant in the wild
Thatâs funny. I was just thinking to myself âFuck all this mushroom noise. Iâll just stick to eating carrots, no way to mistake those for something else.â I guess Iâll 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 wouldnât survive an apocalypse alone regardless.