Comment by DonaldFisk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DonaldFisk | Hacker News Reader

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This is why I've learned how to identify wild plants. I've been surprised on a few occasions by people unable to identify plums and cherries growing wild. But if you can't identify wild plants you shouldn't eat them.

Wild mushrooms are harder to identify. Other than the few I can readily identify on sight, I use an identification guide. There have been several cases of people (almost always from the Far East) inadvertently dying after eating death caps (Amanita phalloides) which I've read taste delicious but are fatal, and can take days to kill:

http://www.iwcp.co.uk/news/second-mushroom-victim-critical-i...

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-01-04/two-die-from-death-cap...

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-06-08/woman-dies-after-eatin...

They mistake them for paddy straw mushrooms (Volvariella volvacea) which look identical and are used in Chinese and Thai cuisine. They can be distinguished by spore colour but a better way is to check it came out of a tin before eating them.

I think the problem is less so identifying plums and cherries and more so identifying that they are not something which looks like a plum or cherry but is poisonous. I know what common fruits look like; I don't know which fruits don't have poisonous doppelgangers in my region.

abc.net.au links - are you in Australia?

I live in Tasmania and have been meaning to find an edible field guide to mushrooms or some such. Mushrooms here in Launceston are frequently popping out of the ground in my front and backyard and on the grass verges by the road, and if you walk anyway in the national parks and state forests you're up to your knees in mushrooms.

Would love to know if any of them are edible.

I'm in England, but there are death caps in Australia, which unfortunately were introduced along with oak trees.

You need an identification guide for your area (Tasmania, or perhaps all of Australia). Unless you can safely identify the species, you cannot be sure it is safe to eat, and should discard it. Identification is usually done using a dichotomous key, which involves checking for the presence or absence of a characteristic (which involves understanding some jargon), then another, until you're down to genus level. Then you check visually to identify the species. It's a bit like an expert system, except printed in a book.

In some countries in continental Europe, you can take wild mushrooms to a pharmacist for identification.

More than an identification guide, you need an experienced friend or someone who knows what they're doing. There are way too many poisonous mushrooms that look like edible ones (death cap/inky cap).

> More than an identification guide ...

Better than just an identification guide ...

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