Paul Fenwick18h ago

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

Show threadJoe ❌👑18h 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.
Show threadPaul Fenwick

@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. 😢

4:45amWeb
Show threadJoe ❌👑12h 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.