In California, Poisonous Death Cap Mushrooms Are the Forager's Bane | Hacker News Reader

In California, Poisonous Death Cap Mushrooms Are the Forager's Bane

npr.org

27 pointsThevet43 comments

Not mentioned in the article, but the victims are often people who grew up in other countries where it's safe to eat wild mushrooms. After moving here they keep the same habits and pick these poisonous mushrooms.

There were quite a few cases where asian immigrants mistook death caps for the edible Asian paddy straw mushroom, and got very sick.

If you mistake any amanita, let alone a death cap, for any of the other mushrooms mentioned in the article -- hedgehog, matsutake, or chanterelle -- you're simply not paying enough attention to be picking mushrooms to be eaten.

Never mind the gills, which were mentioned in the article, the ring is a dead giveaway, and if you don't know what the ring is, again, you shouldn't be picking mushrooms to eat.

(The way that amanitas form and grow often leaves a tattered-looking membrane circling the middle of the stem. You can see it in the pictures in the article.)

I'm sorry that this lady got so sick. Luckily, she got a second chance, and hopefully she will learn more about what she's doing before she goes picking again.

I also grew up picking and eating wild mushrooms. The popular edible wild mushrooms like chanterelle and matsutake are very distinct and easily identifiable. I avoid ambiguous edible varieties. When in doubt, throw it out.

I can only assume she was careless or clueless.

I like blushers but you really have to be able to positively identify it as it's easy to confuse with (in Europe) common super poisonous mushrooms.

What's with all the fungiphobia?

Within USA/Canada, learn to identify death caps and destroying angels. If you stay away from any mushroom that you aren't sure is one of these two, don't eat any wild mushrooms raw (very few mushrooms are good raw anyway), and don't gorge on anything that isn't obviously identifiable, your odds of doing yourself any permanent harm are very low.

That's not to say all other species are "safe." Obviously, you should only collect species that you can identify. But amanitas are basically trivial to identify (know their tricks, cut mushrooms in half to check for hidden/immature gills), and if you don't eat Amanitas (again, in USA/Canada), it would be a truly freak incident if you actually died of poisoning. You're more likely to be eaten by a bear.

If you are incapable of this, then not only do you have no business foraging for mushrooms you probably shouldn't be preparing your own food. Number of people killed or disabled due to foraging poisonous mushrooms is nothing compared to those killed by improper food preparation and handling, but you don't see people quaking in their boots in the poultry aisle of the grocery. The article cites five deaths in five years in all of California. How many people died of salmonella and botulism in that time? How many mushroom-phobes would be so reckless as to drink "raw" milk?

A lot of supposedly poisonous mushrooms are in fact edible, especially when boiled.

Here in Norway we had this publicly funded mushroom control staff located strategically near the forest to allow people to get their mushroom-forage checked by an expert. They would literally go through all the mushrooms in your basket and throw out any mushrooms they couldn't positively identify as edible. Unfortunately the money "ran" out. I guess we'll take the hit as an increased spending on public healthcare instead. http://www.newsinenglish.no/2015/08/10/money-ran-out-for-mus... edit: here's a better link with pictures, but in norwegian: http://www.nrk.no/norge/savner-stotte-til-soppkontroll-1.119...

Seems like a waste of money. If people want to learn the edible species they can just join their local mushroom club like in the US.

I can see paying someone to be there a couple hours a week, but as a full time job that seems ridiculous.

Perhaps training those who are already stationed (forest/park rangers, etc.) would be a more efficient path. I think the point of accessible trained staff as opposed to a mushroom club is to target those who would otherwise not take the effort to investigate what they gathered, and end up consuming harmful species.

Call me cynical, but stopping someone from eating some random unidentified plants/mushrooms seems like a net harm to humanity.

You're cynical.

You can give a man a fish, or you can teach a man to fish.

Or you can tax a third man to pay for a second man to catch fish for the first man.

Here in France, part of the mandatory curriculum to be a pharmacist (druggist) is to learn about mushrooms. Therefore they have a duty to identify -for no charge- the mushrooms you bring them. You do not have to be a customer. And I really mean every pharmacy. They all have a huge mushroom encyclopaedia to make sure in case of doubt.

I used to bring psilocybes to my local pharmacy when I started to search for them and was not quite sure yet what they exactly look like. I got bad looks but was never sent away without safe information.

In the past decade or so here in Canberra, Australia, we've had a handful of fatalities in the local Chinese community. Death cap mushrooms can look similar to straw fungi, which is popular in Chinese cooking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanita_phalloides#Similarity_...

Something to be aware of in Australia also;

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-02-07/death-cap-mushroom-sea...

Another common garden plant most people dont know to be aware of is Oleander. I see this everywhere like in schools and am amazed. People have died using the branches as skewers to cook. The smoke can also be poisonous if people burn this plant.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerium

And for interest, only a problem in North Queensland check out the Gympie Gympie tree. This is really something to keep a wide berth. Amazing what nature can produce.

http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/science-enviro...

There are signs up around the ACT like this:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VeN5uDOjoIA/Tx9Qq5oQCLI/AAAAAAAArV...

It'd be cool if there were mushroom-testing reagent kits, like for MDMA etc.

Edit: apparently chemical tests exist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_tests_in_mushroom_ide...

It's not needed, it only takes an hour or so to teach a beginner the major genuses that contain poisonous species. In fact for the first year the rule is basically that if it looks like a mushroom then don't eat it.

> In fact for the first year the rule is basically that if it looks like a mushroom then don't eat it.

Sure, that prevents people from dying. But what about all those mushrooms that people didn't dare pick? Is that not a loss - a loss that could be remedied by such a kit?

> Is that not a loss - a loss that could be remedied by such a kit?

Not really. Just because something doesn't contain a handful of specific poisons doesn't mean you want to eat it. The vast majority of mushrooms are neither poisonous nor edible.

Somewhere I read that if a mushroom has white gills then it could be poisonous, and that brown gills are safe to eat. Not that I'm going to pick mushrooms, but is that advice sound?

Absolutely not

I did a couple minutes of looking to find a poisonous mushroom with brown gills:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galerina_marginata

Such simplistic rules are a bad idea when foraging. Before you eat anything, positively identify it.

Not at all. The bit about white gills is probably referring to Amanitaceae, which include some marvelously toxic species that destroy the human liver. But the advice is way too general to be useful. Brown-gilled species are not universally edible, and white-gilled species are not universally poisonous.

To forage safely for plants or mushrooms, you should know the identifying characteristics of your target species and any non-edible lookalikes.

There are definitely no general rules for determining mushroom edibility.

A great resource is Mushrooms Demystified by David Arora.

There are no simple rules like that which can reliably differentiate edible mushrooms from poisonous ones. The best way to start foraging is by learning some relatively unmistakeable edible species and only picking those.

No. The deadly webcap is an example of a poisonous mushroom that had brown gills. It can be found in northern Europe. Further, there is a broad category of difficult to identify mushrooms referred to as "little brown mushrooms" that includes poisonous brown filled species.

The notion that brown gilled mushrooms are safe whereas white gilled mushrooms are not sounds like region-specific folk knowledge, and given the way mushroom species migrate and the existence of relatively rare mushrooms, I wouldn't count on it to be reliable anywhere in the world. Positive identification is the only safe way to select edible mushrooms, and as this article points out even that bears the risk of false identification, particularly if you aren't fully aware of what other similar species to check for.

I have to say; when I was a kid (in Alberta, not California), the general advice was not to pick and eat mushrooms without significant knowledge. I don't really see the allure either, common table mushrooms are very tasty and plentiful.

I think this is just one of the Darwin award's new qualifying categories.

Mushrooms can have a variety of flavours. I bought one at a farmer's market in Oregon several years ago that smelled like fried fish, and tasted a bit like it too. It was only cooked over a grill with some olive oil. It was a "found" mushroom too, the guy before me was chatting with the seller about training truffle-finding dogs.

My favourite hot-and-sour soup is filled with a variety of funguses (well 2 or 3). Though these are not "found" mushrooms, they are different from the "common table mushrooms" that I believe you're talking about.

edit: This is the one that I bought at the farmer's market: http://www.specialtyproduce.com/produce/Abalone_Mushrooms_32...

Yes, that is the normal advice for California too.

Usually it's immigrants who die from death caps due to mistaken identity. The article is shocking to me because it involves a non-immigrant picking and eating mushrooms without expert knowledge: that's suicidal behavior.

Have you tasted Morels?

I have and had the same reaction as GP. They tasted pretty much like any regular store-bought mushroom.

You need to use dairy and not olive oil with them, for what it's worth. Unless you sautée them with butter and salt you're not going to bring out the flavor.

Foraging for wild mushrooms is part of the ancient and rich culinary tradition of many European countries, where poisoning rates among those brought up in the tradition are very low. Yes reliably identifying a range of edible wild species takes knowledge and experience, but it's rewarding (in terms of both ecological and culinary appreciation), and it's only a little bit more challenging than learning to ID wild berries, for example. If you don't appreciate those rewards personally, there is no need to denigrate those who do.

For me, the flavors and textures are so varied, each suited to a different range of classic dishes, that saying common table mushrooms should suffice is the position of a philistine. I mean, bananas are tasty and plentiful, why bother with mango and papaya and passionfruit...

I picked and ate mushrooms as a kid frequently. I had some books and very quickly learned to identify the poisonous and edible kinds. It wasn't that hard and I never got sick. But I was careful and did research first and if there was any doubt I left the mushroom alone. I personally loved picking mushrooms... it was a lot of fun. I don't see it as dumb or risky at all as long as you know what you are doing.

Death cap survivor story: https://blog.mycology.cornell.edu/2006/11/22/i-survived-the-...

At the moment, I'm reading Euell Gibbons (Stalking the Faraway Places). I love his work, and he gathers mushrooms, but that's where I draw the line. Too much downside risk.

There are several wild mushrooms that are unique in appearance, or have only one or two problematic lookalikes that are easily tested. If you're interested in picking, you can look into them.

The "chicken of the woods" and "hen of the woods" are perfect starter mushrooms. (Although chickens' edibility when growing on softwoods is questioned, so it depends where you live.) There is nothing that bears any resemblance to them.

Chanterelles and porcini each have a few straightforward guidelines for distinguishing them.

Is there (or could there be) a quick, layperson-usable chemical test for the toxins? (If so, it could be applied to both the raw mushrooms and dishes like soups prepared from them.)

As partially colorblind (like 10% of all men) picking mushrooms scares me.

Not saying I don't pick musrooms, only I only pick mushrooms I'm sure don't have any dangerous lookalikes.

Given how hard wild mushrooms can be to identify, I'm surprised that there are people who pick and eat them.

It isn't that hard, you just have to be careful not to overestimate your knowledge of the mushrooms where you are picking.

There are many varieties that can be visually identified with very high confidence after only moderate practice. Fortunately morels fall into this category, they're delicious. It's true that there are mushrooms that can be confused with morels, but it's also true that it doesn't take all that much practice to understand the differences.

Correctly identifying any given mushroom can be hard, requiring the right taxonomic keys (and the comprehensive ones come in multiple volumes), a microscope, various stains and reagents, and lots of training. Field mycologists have a term, LBM, meaning "little brown mushroom", which speaks to the pain of separating such specimens to species level even with lots of ID experience.

On the other hand there are many edible species which are unmistakeable and which you can quickly learn to reliably identify based on obvious features. In many European countries, foraging for wild mushrooms is a traditional pastime and intimately linked with national cuisine.

This one mushroom is pretty well-known to be deadly here in Russia, knew that since age 3 or so. Good thing, it is easy to recognize.

Anyways, never ever try out your luck with mushrooms, if you were not well-taught to deal with them by someone experienced, in person (internet advice / taking and sending m-room photos do not count, period).

Couple seasons of mushroom-hunting alongside someone, willing to teach you, is a minimum before you ever decide to put any mushroom you picked up yourself into your (or someone else's) mouth.

Btw, even experienced people sometimes do not pick up mushrooms, they have suspicions about (there are some not quite deadly ones here, masquerading as edible in my place, for example).

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