Mastodawn

It's mushroom season in the southern hemisphere, and I'm rediscovering just how much *worse* foraging resources are compared to even a few years ago.

There's a terrifying number of LLM-written mushrooming books and guides out there, and they just straight make stuff up.

Fungi are a particular risk to foragers, because humans straight up don't have the ability to taste some of the most deadly toxins. The fungi that cause the most poisonings are the ones that taste good.

As always, do not eat any fungi unless you are absolutely sure what it is, and just as importantly absolutely sure what it is not. Learning to identify dangerous species is even more important than being able to identify edible ones. There are just too many look-alikes.

Stay safe. Be extra cautious of books and guides written in this decade. Happy mushrooming!

#foraging #foragingAustralia #mushrooms #mushrooming

Luci Bitchface Angerfoot 15h ago

@pjf i would be encouraging billionaire investors to use the far superior machine written guides in this case then

Joe ❌👑14h ago

@pjf It is particularly dangerous for mushroom loving immigrants/expats, because a mushroom that looks just like a delicious edible you're familiar with may destroy your liver. This happened to Vietnamese refugees in California who ate death caps, which look like an edible Southeast Asian mushroom but live up to their name.

Paul Fenwick 9h ago

@not2b : Was this straw mushrooms? Because they're delicious and look *very* similar to death caps when immature.

They also don't really have much overlap in terms of range, so if you've grown up collecting straw mushrooms then you've likely never encountered a death cap. 😢

Joe ❌👑9h ago

@pjf Yes, that's the one: a bit of googling says that it's Paddy Straw Mushroom (Volvariella volvacea). There were quite a few tragic incidents in the 1980s, when the big wave of Vietnamese refugees came to California; much fewer after the word got out.

Martin Rundkvist 8h ago

@not2b @pjf
Elderly Thai ladies have died in Swedish hospitals for this very reason.

@pjf oh jeez I mushroom a lot and some of the things in your basket there look like "whoa no DO NOT" species around here

which, exactly to your point

know your business and have a reliable human-written book that covers your local area

Paul Fenwick 9h ago

@sarae : Absolutely! And a mushroom needs to be taken in context. Where was it growing? How was it growing? What does it smell like? What can you find at the base of the stipe? How are the gills attached? What similar but dangerous mushrooms grow in this area?

Is the "do not eat" one you're thinking of xanthodermus¹? We get them here as well, but the smell is extremely distinctive, especially if one crushes the base of the stipe.

¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agaricus_xanthodermus

Agaricus xanthodermus - Wikipedia

@pjf no, you've got a couple in there that look like russulas we would not eat here unless they were lobstered, c.f. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russula#Edibility

Russula - Wikipedia

Jef Poskanzer 11h ago

@pjf Yet another way the robots are going to kill us. Metal skeletons with guns: so passé.

deepfryed 9h ago

@pjf Amanita, pronounced as A-MAN-EATA

I was a stupid kid that foraged mushrooms, luckily didn't end up dead but did get very sick many times. The last one put me off mushrooms for a decade. I still love them, but am extremely careful.

Paul Fenwick 9h ago

@deepfryed : Yikes!!! I've been foraging mushrooms for ~25+ years, and fortunately have never been sick. But I have found plenty of dangerous and deadly mushrooms while out and about, and I tend very much to err on the side of caution.

I'm so glad you got through childhood mushrooming intact!

deepfryed 8h ago

@pjf heh me too. It's so good when you do find the edible ones and fry them up in some butter, garlic, salt and pepper. My mouth is my enemy as usual.

Sören Meyer-Eppler 9h ago

@pjf the city of Zürich has an amazing service to solve this problem: you go forage to your heart's content and then bring the bounty to an expert who'll sort out the unsafe ones for free.

https://www.stadt-zuerich.ch/de/gesundheit/gesundheitsschutz/pilzkontrolle.html

Pilzkontrolle

Sie sind unsicher, ob Ihre gesammelten Pilze geniessbar sind? Lassen Sie Ihre Pilzernte zu Ihrer eigenen Sicherheit und der Ihrer Familie und Freunde kostenlos kontrollieren.

Paul Fenwick 9h ago

@BuschnicK : omg that's awesome!!

I was wondering how they'd do a proper ID if the mushroom has been cut through the stipe, but I see they ask for the entire fruiting body (including the base) be brought in, which allows for a much more thorough ID.

Greg Vernon 7h ago

@BuschnicK @pjf There's an organization here in Switzerland that provides mushroom experts to make sure your mushrooms are okay. Many communities have their own mushroom expert.
https://www.vapko.ch

Vapko – Home

VAPKO Home Page

Dr. 🏔️❄️🗺️📊🎨⛷️🧗🏻‍♂️🛶9h ago

Norway has this awesome service, where you can get a fungal find checked out by real people for free:

https://app.soppkontroll.no/

Our approach over here on the west island would be to build an app, *say* it is expert based, jam things through a shitAI anyway, and then when people get sick say oops nobody is accountable those people were promoted to exec roles in the next department over...

...be great to have a local version though...

Digital soppkontroll

Paul Fenwick 8h ago

@adamsteer : That rocks!!!!