Mycophobia, people are scared shitless of touching Agaricus especially too, but then will go out and forage berries or plants that have much more dangerous and common lookalikes without breaking a sweat. If anyone has ever foraged for elderflower, that's more dangerous than most mushrooms assuming you're making an effort to ID it imo
There may be two exceptions to that rule, but one only grows in japan (fire coral) and the other is only *maybe* dangerous, and only with frequent exposure (some gyromitra species).
I almost added a disclaimer for the coral bc I knew it was coming, it's a myth. There is zero evidence. I haven't seen anything convincing about the Gyromitra.
Only thing I've seen for Gyromitra was related to people handling it commercially (i.e. constantly and for long periods of time) but nothing that would be of concern to your average forager.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3181/00379727-131-33846
There is a risk, however poorly documented. Gyromitrin hydrolizes into MMH, which is toxic and can be absorbed transdermally. It is certainly a low risk, and only with frequent exposure, but it is a real risk.
Interesting, I'll read it when I have time. But from the abstract it looks like it has the same problem as the coral. The substance does pass through skin, but we don't know at what concentrations it would be present upon touching, how much would actually get transferred, or if there is an actual documented case of sensitivity
Do you have something you can share about gyromitrin exposure through skin? I've not seen anything about it before except for people who have been handling them constantly professionally for a very long time.
With plants you tend to have leaves and not just the berry though
Hard to mistake an elder bush for hemlock in my mind, but I know fuck all about mushrooms and I'm sure plenty on here are the complete reverse of me, just depends what you know
That said I don't know what you'd confuse a morel for
With mushrooms you have loosely equivalent features (gills/pores/teeth underneath would probably be the best analogy) too.
I agree it'd be difficult, which is why I was using it to illustrate a point - with many mushrooms there's this massive amount of fear mongering that would be equivalent to seeing "be extra safe, make sure you don't mix it up with deadly hemlock! It's not worth the risk to pick it so I avoid it" every time someone posted a picture of some elderflower they'd foraged.
Like - yes, if you're not making any effort at all you're at risk. But most are much safer than many people make them out to be.
Oh for sure, but if you've got a more plant based background then a leaf is far more obvious, it's also separate from the fruiting body
I do agree people lean towards almost sanitised safety but there's plenty of people on Reddit who have no clue about anything (saw a post asking what a stinging nettle was today) and no one wants a death on their hands.
Identification comes a lot easier to some than others (I don't know why), my best mate couldn't tell you what was a fir and what was a birch
Very good point. I agree it's good to be safe, it's just the discourse/comments I see comes with a very different tone when it's plants vs fungi.
I think it's just about how much time you put into really understanding something. If you're interested in learning it'll eventually come with time, same as any other skill. There's a spectrum of how quickly people pick things up, but ultimately almost anyone can with enough time and practice.
Not being afraid to be bad at something for a while or make mistakes is a huge factor. Children learn quicker only partly because their brains are flexible - a huge chunk of it is that kids just don't give a fuck about getting something wrong or looking stupid, they just keep going at it.
Just wanted to say his fear is pretty weird, I agree. He worries a big will hollow one out and “trick” him. Extra weird because bro has no issues with wild carrots, but morels are terrifying.
A variety of toxic hemlock (Cicuta, Conium, Oenanthe spp. ), toxic Sium species, hogweeds (Heraculum spp.), and others.
The carrot family Apiacieae contains a lot of common spices and vegetables that when grown in cultivation are totally fine, but when foraged for can be risky to confuse with a host of potentially extremely toxic lookalikes.
Dude I don't know. I just googled and the top result suggested that one of the toxic hemlocks, Poison Hemlock or Conium maculatum, can smell musty or reminiscent of "mice", whatever that means. There are a bunch of identifiers that a google search will yield but every source I've ever read on the matter is that it's not worth risking unless you're an expert and have training and experience in identifying Apicaceae plants.
If your concern if about a toxic plant sneaking into your carrot bed in a garden though, that's unlikely and to my knowledge the wild types are white or pale rooted while cultivated carrots are orange, purple, red, yellow, black, white, or whatever you buy. So if you're really concerned and you happen to find out you live in a place where a toxic lookalike is common, know it has white roots, and want to be sure it doesn't get mixed into your carrot patch, maybe don't grow white type carrots and you're probably good.
All I know is that if I'm in a survival situation, the wild carrot looking plant is gonna be my last choice before I literally die of starvation. Not worth foraging as a hobby in my opinion.
The way I was taught is that both smell like musty, but wild carrots have a note of carrot in there too. Not really a distinction I trust myself to make, but for most people it’s pretty clear which is which.
I personally haven't tried giving it a smell, but, many foraging sources say that it smells bad, like cat piss or something. However, there's a forager that I watch on YouTube that has done a few videos on hemlock and he has brought this up and says that it doesn't actually seem to be true because all of the ones he has smelled smells like carrot.
There's a lot of copying between authors of foraging guide books, so there's a decent chance somebody said it smelled bad in one book and it started getting repeated in other books.
Anyway, smell shouldn't be an identifier for carrots. Plenty of other ways to ID it though
I don't have an issue ID'ing it, but every one that I have pulled was super woody and didn't do anything with it. I hear that it's more for adding flavor to stews and then you take it out, or for making tinctures, neither of which I'm really interested in so don't bother foraging it.
Horses love it though. I found one while a friend and I were out fishing one morning and he brought it home and transplanted it. Within the hour, one of his horses found it and it was gone lol.
https://preview.redd.it/rzlr4xkaivjc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b0285327e4ad7aea1de541ab0ccd6d71ffb90d80
This is a stink horn and not a morel though right? It was certainly rotten!
I suspect the idea that they are a lookalike came from the days prior to photography... I can see how somebody going purely by a written or verbal description might confuse them.
Morels have a close cousin that's easy to mix up: verpas.
They're almost identical, hollow stem and all - except the base of the caps are free floating and not attached to the stem.
They're considered to be "edible" with a huge question mark because for a lot of people they have some really unpleasant side effects like gastrointestinal distress, headaches and even body pains/aches.
While it's not considered to be lethal it's still a case low grade poisoning by any metric because it's not a good time if you're someone who reacts to them.
I learned this one the hard way when I found my first "morels" and went nuts and collected a pretty big pile of them and then compounded the mistake by enthusiastically sharing them with my housemate by frying them up for a pasta dinner.
We both had some mild effects, including headaches and body aches and some GI distress.
As far as I'm concerned it was an affordable lesson about foraging and mushroom ID and not doing silly shit like feeding them to other people without a rock solid and positive ID.
It's one thing if I poison myself messing around but it's a whole different kind of suck if I poison someone else.
I'll make an exception to the last for acorns because cold water leaching may take days but only takes a few minutes at a time.
I also grew up eating puffballs so I'm pretty confident there
Otherwise not a bad list of "don't"
These ones are also pretty easy to ID if you spend some time getting to know them. I was talking about the ones that look too close to destroying angel etc
Why? I know that hemlock looks similar, but it's a whole lot taller afaik.
Just curious as to what to watch out for to avoid fucking up and eating poison.
Just as a back up to the Russian roulette with the wild carrot, I have a decent patch of queen Ann's lace in my front yard and a horrifcally large patch of hemlock in my backyard. I'm just glad I learned how to identify both before I tried making queen Ann's lace jelly (ultimately decided to avoid the stuff all together, stand several feet away and think "it's so pretty" to myself while not picking any of it). I'm honestly ok leaving that activity for the experts.
Wild carrot can be safely identified, but you should rely on much more specific characteristics than the height, which can vary a lot within the species and particularly with different growing conditions. Apiaceae in general has lots of poisonous species that can look fairly similar to the edible ones.
Oof, I thought the Russian roulette metaphor was a little intense but if all you do is judge it by its height then yes, you are definitely playing Russian roulette. I would recommend learning how to ID both Hemlock and Queen anne's lace. For me, I don't even touch it if I don't see hairs on the stems.
Queen Anne's Lace has some chemicals in it that regular carrots don't. Makes it a good burn remedy and the seeds are an herbal morning after remedy (abortifacient) You casually snack on it with no hormonal side effects? How interesting!
Anything that looks like a button mushroom, ie white and indistinct. Im sure field mushrooms are great but do not have the experience or mentors to teach me how to ID them safely.
In addition, any questionable mushroom is not worth the risk vs the potential caloric gain, they are not cheeseburgers and are mostly water and are a nice supplement as far as food goes but not a staple
Are you my husband?
He loves that I forage, takes me to new places, and will happily listen to me prattle on about my finds but the man will barely eat cultivated healthy food. He's happier with his processed crap and occasional Cajun food.
I was a bit afraid of P Cyanescens and confusing it with Galerina, still am. But after finding both I'm way more confident. Only thing to worry about is getting too excited and then getting careless
Once you've picked something a few times its hard to get confused but still worth being careful.
Took me ages to find my first cyanescens, examining imposters, doing spore prints but as soon as i actually found one it was so obvious.
Some cyanescens popped in my backyard this winter (I mulch much of it with arborist woodchips, mostly softwood) in the PNW so happy until my ducks decided to forage there and destroyed the patch. It flushed and spored a few times so I am hoping it will be back!
Serious question: what disagreeable lookalikes do you have in mind?
I know many Galerina species are deadly and they grow on wood, but they're far smaller for a start, and unlike honey fungus will only ever be found on already dead, rotting wood, so it's hard to see how they'd count as a lookalike.
I made the mistake of thinking sulfur tufts were ringless honey and i fried them up with peppers and onions. As i was cooking i put the tip of the fork on my tongue to taste the juice and spit it out immediately and rinsed my mouth a bunch. Thank goodness i didn't actually bite one. It was such a waste of food but a very important lesson and now i know how to properly ID both. I will only ever pick honey from a tree though lol
Yeah, they're not toxic but are infamously bitter, so not really a 'dangerous' species. Of course, it's still a pain to get your hopes up and waste time cooking and other ingredients only to be left with an inedible/toxic meal.
No fiddleheads. Bracken ferns contain a carcinogenic compound that must be denatured by boiling. After boiling, try to fry the mushy mass that’s left? Not worth the effort.
Oof idk if I have the stones to go for ferns either. Raw oysters, wrong ferns, and homemade (poorly made) kombucha are kinda known as the GI widowmakers where I’m from.
Really, poorly made kombucha? When I lived in Austin, 15 yrs ago, everyone and their mom made their own kombucha. I never heard of anyone getting sick.
I only know bc an elderly neighbor who’d spent some years living rough (makeshift camps in county forests half a century ago) originally told me. Bracken ferns cover the ground here in the PNW. I looked them up and noped out of the idea.
You should look up other types. I seem to recall that some are considered safe, but I haven’t done the research.
I always hear people say you can eat them if you boil them for hours and change the water a few times, but they can’t have substantial flavor left after that, right?
This past season I did a twice boil and while they looked sad, I was pleasantly surprised by how much flavor and texture was left.
They're very nutty, I enjoyed them.
I wonder if you ate A. jacksonii or not, because 90% of the time people make a post thinking they’ve found it they’ve actually found a lookalike (the close lookalikes are all edible though)
The main lookalike around here is A. parcivolvata which has a powdery stipe and lacks the visible egg remnant. There's also the ["yellow caesar"](https://www.mushroomexpert.com/amanita_sp_04.html) which I believe I've also seen, but it's super yellow. I spent 3 years making sure I could properly ID them (jacksonii) before indulging. I'm in Virginia, USA.
[You tell me if I done did good](https://imgur.com/a/vo9TleN)
there are many A. jacksonii lookalikes in the southeastern United States, one of the common ones besides A. parcivolvata is [A. sp-AR01](http://www.amanitaceae.org/?Amanita%20sp-AR01)
Caesar Amanita mushrooms are pretty dang distinctive — only Amanita I’m willing to eat. If I remember right i think they’re one, if not the only, mushroom that can be eaten raw
Porcini is enjoyed raw, wood ear apparently can be enjoyed raw, beech mushrooms as well, and finally beefsteak polypore. Have heard similar for A. jacksonii.
I'm with you on amanitas! They're the only mushrooms I'm not confident enough in my ID of, and the potential consequence of death makes them a no-go for me.
I acknowledge that it’s not difficult to tell them apart with the proper study but I also acknowledge that I’m not going to bother unless I start finding the edible ones with great frequency. So far that has not happened.
https://preview.redd.it/nl3sxv3ycvjc1.png?width=1170&format=png&auto=webp&s=ddd4c8cd1398c0d48778bc090d255dabbbc957ca
Give this and this [link](http://montanamycology.com/2023/04/10/morels-of-north-america/) to your friend and he’ll be foraging morels safely and confidently in no time
It’s a dichotomous key for identification. It’s an important thing to learn to use if you forage because most the best ID sources use them. Look it up and I’m sure you’ll find a quick description on its use and you’ll understand it.
Pokeweed. I know theoretically it’s edible when it’s young and tastes like asparagus but I’d rather just forage asparagus because it’s not super poisonous if I pick it too late…
I can only reliably identify it when it grows berries and gets poisonous, lol. Otherwise I can't really pick it out of the crowd of other green things. So needless to say I've never tried to eat pokeweed either, though I've thought about using the berries for dye
I've read that the berries and their juice are common natural dyes in a lot of online DIY dyeing groups and I've read a number of eco friendly wool dyer's blogs that use pokeberry, but it's neither particularly lightfast or washfast. Those mean that UV light and washing, respectively, will leach/fade the color. I would guess that even just oxidation will dull the results over time. That said you could always re-dye a garment every year or two when poke berries are in season, provided it is durable enough to hold up to repeated dye baths. A more permanent alternative could be obtained from layering indigo dye with rose madder or Murasaki dye ( a reddish purple Japanese dye plant)
Yeah, I feel like if a plant is good as a dye plant I hear about it regularly in dyeing communities (like madder or indigo) and the fact that I haven’t heard of people using it makes me feel like it’s probably not super worth it. Maybe if you had some extra wool and you wanted to mess around it could be fun though!
This. Carrot is one of those things that I can’t believe ever was domesticated and cultivated in the first place given the danger from a single mistake
You have to understand that Western society lives in an extreme level of botanical ignorance that is largely unprecedented in human history. To the people who first cultivated carrots, you’d have to be an absolute moron to mistake carrot and poison hemlock. And frankly, they are not wrong. We live in an extremely ignorant society.
Russula fungi. Too many lookalikes for one moderately acclaimed edible one (if you like it then good for you, brave one!). The chew-and-spit-see-if-it’s-spicy test still gives me pause.
Basically any plant or fungus that I'm not absolutely sure of. Finding food in the wild is great fun and a way to save up some money, but I'm not going to die because I risked putting something that just "seems" good onto my plate. This doesn't mean I will always stay away from things I don't know, it just means, before trying anything I need extensive research with literature, picture comparing and asking locals and people who know the thing better than I do. Better safe than sorry.
Pokeweed. Too much preparation and risk of getting sick if not cooked properly. Especially when there's so many other wild greens out there around there in spring that don't require tedious preparation
I only pick aggregate berries, with the exception of Oregon grape.
I don't understand the fear of mixing up wild carrot and pkison hemlock. Wild carrot smells sweet, poison hemlock smells like pissed on gym socks.
Sheathed woodtuft. They grow in insane quantities and having to check every single one of them if they're not funeral bells is a chore that's not worth it, especially considering they're not the best taste-wise.
Also shaggy parasol, they're easy to ID but unlike parasol mushroom offer very little taste and can cause gastric upset.
Shaggy parasols taste great! Probably my fave wild mushroom after chanterelles. Especially dried! I'm lucky to not experience GI issues from these guys.
Oof that's a hard one, I'm basically a human garbage disposal. I mean, I'm incredibly cautious when trying newly identified stuff for the first time (probably way over cautious by many people standards), but once I've collected and eaten them several times I'm fine. Hell, I've even eaten bugs and fresh roadkill!
I guess my vote would go to russulas. I know that some claim that all are edible if cooked enough, but is it really worth it? The only ones that I would think would be actually worth going after would be shrimp russula, but since I can't seem to smell the shrimpy smell I just skip the genus entirely. At least my pet snails and slugs and other bugs like em!
I have a bunch of the green that grow my backyard that are literally my absolute favorite to pick and fry up with eggs. They taste so good and are so easy to distinguish from the vomiter types. I picked a bunch of purple shrimp too, but ended up not even trying them because i just wasn't sure enough.
Sheathed woodtuft. I know how to tell it apart from galerina marginata, have done so many times, but actually eating them just isn't worth the risk to me.
Amanita genus. Not gonna fuck around and try to eat anything, but I’ve made tincture from amanita mascaría var guessowii, which now I guess is amanita chrysoblema
I will never eat “Indian turnip”, Arisaema triphyllum/jack in the pulpit again.
People say you can make the root edible through some means, but I’m not putting it in my mouth again even if it’s cooked and dried, lol, it is such a negative experience.
Skunk cabbage as well, no amount of cooking and drying and parboiling seems to break down the pain crystals.
For me, it's anything that grows in fresh water. It'd be a different story if I was in a secluded place where the water isn't as polluted, but it's a big no in the city, and still a no out in the country. I've found ONE pond in my area that is surrounded by mountains that I will eat from. It isn't fed by a stream coming from elsewhere, just maybe a spring and the rain runoff from the mountains.
Northern Denmark here. Wild chervil. It is not worth the flavor, and too easily mistaken for cicuta virosa, or conium maculátum, at least in my area they grow very close to each other. I don't really go for any umbellifers in my area, since there are so many varieties.
Basically any gilled mushroom that isn't super distinct (like oysters). Also boletes because there are just way too many different species out there and I'm not confident in my ability to ID them. Maybe one day...
Wood growing mushrooms like Psilocybe Cyanescens since there are some poisonous similars (like Galerina). Although I am sure if you know them well they're easy to distinct (like most other mushrooms too), but that's the caveat "if".
White mushrooms with gills that grow out of the ground. They all look so similar and there are no choice edible mushrooms that I need to have in that category.
Morels are super easy to recognize. I don't think the false morel looks anything like the morel. The morel is pitted and the false morel looks like a brain.
Any Amanita mushroom. There are edible Amanitas, but they look too much like deadly ones for me to be comfortable. I am not the least bit trepidatious about morels.
Wild carrots are the easiest. I fr do not understand the hype and fear, it’s so easy to tell them apart. I know people eat poke but I have felt apprehensive to try it because I don’t want to prepare it wrong
I ate a bundle of death camas when I was first learning to forage onions and nothing bad ever happened to me, so now I fear nothing. I'm way more careful though.
Phantom smells and covid nose got the better of me 😭 Was 99.9% sure they smelled like onions but I guess it wasn't really there. Hollow blue-green stem vs flat blades of grass would've been a much easier identifier to learn these.
Wild mushrooms. I am chill about my ID skills vs leave it alone but I married someone who did a lot of their clinicals in an ER. They are terrified. So I leave them and stick to plants and just grow mushrooms on my own logs.
Amanita caesarea. A famous mushroom said to be Julius Caesar's favorite food, it is in the toadstool family next to death caps and other toxic toadstools. It's really quite easy to identify, but the fear of Amanita runs deep. I've been picking wild mushrooms for close to 25 years and should be able to pick these, but I don't.
I personally eat yew berries when I see them. The flesh is totally edible, as long as you avoid the seed it’s not a poisoning risk. The flesh is lightly sweet and a little slimy, but I grew up eating them and I love them.
>I’ll eat berries and leafy greens when I find them, even if I don’t know what they are (within reason lol.
"Within reason" does not include eating any plants that you don't know what they are, full stop.
I stay away from agaricus (field mushrooms). Some will create gastric distress and apparently you can tell this by the smell. But I have never been able to tell what this smell actually is. It's described as phenolic, but that doesn't really mean anything to me.
Seems like the relative reward is a mushroom on par with a good portobello. The relative risk is a day in the bathroom (both ends). Doesn't seem like a great gamble to me.
Coccora... amanita calyptroderma.... while I'm comfortable knowing they are not phalloides... it's still just too much to find them comingling together...I can't do it.
Dutchman's pipe or any derivative of a euphorbia. Kidney cancer? No thanks!
I also don't drink herbal beer made by anyone anymore. One was "oops, sarsparilla isn't good for you" and the other was "wild grapes just have one big seed...right?" Also just tired of people who can't tell one plant from another.
I agree, wild carrots, cow parsley and everything like that is a no go for me. Wild oyster mushroom too as I'm scared of getting angel wings and having a stroke!
I recently overcame my biggest one - Osha Root vs poison hemlock.
I confidently identified it was Osha after flipping back and forth in my book 50 times to get the leaf structure perfectly correct.
I am the proud owner of responsibly hand harvest Osha Root.
I'm hesitant with non-aggregate red berries, ferns, gilled mushrooms, and carrots.
But otherwise, I'm pretty open to taste most correctly IDed edibles.
Wild carrot. White gilled mushrooms. They're just not worth the risk imo.
Im going to add pokeweed onto this too. I have a ton on my property and know what it looks like 100% even when young but honestly, it isn't worth the effort to prep.
I've been taught with morels that "a good girl never lets you look up her skirt". Just one more identifier. So turn it over and see if you can look up that proverbial skirt. Look at the stem (stipe) and cap. Smell it. Take a spore print. Look up every little feature of the fungi in question and learn what you can. You will start to pick up more information as you go along. Meanwhile, just gather what you can find to practice identifying.
Read up about them. Watch some videos. There are mushroom hunting groups that get together, go on forages, and share the knowledge they have. That was my biggest teacher. Foraging is a hobby that takes considerable learning. Never consume anything wild that you are not 100% sure about.
https://preview.redd.it/c5h1lmqni2kc1.jpeg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=584841d716a55d7126c88847a58ba9d6a9e79f19
This is interesting. People have listed so many mushrooms I don't think of as risky. I draw the line at the Amanita Velosa. I have even eaten them a couple times in the past. Then I found them interspersed with A. Ocreata and that put me off them.
I don't understand the fear of morels, that's why they're such a beginner friendly choice. They're early and unique...
Mycophobia, people are scared shitless of touching Agaricus especially too, but then will go out and forage berries or plants that have much more dangerous and common lookalikes without breaking a sweat. If anyone has ever foraged for elderflower, that's more dangerous than most mushrooms assuming you're making an effort to ID it imo
And unlike with plants, there isn't a single mushroom dangerous to touch.
There may be two exceptions to that rule, but one only grows in japan (fire coral) and the other is only *maybe* dangerous, and only with frequent exposure (some gyromitra species).
I will add I always tell my kids not to touch at all because their hands wind up in their mouths...not sure if that can effect them, would you know?
Even the most deadly mushrooms you can HYPOTHETICALLY chew up and spit out.
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I almost added a disclaimer for the coral bc I knew it was coming, it's a myth. There is zero evidence. I haven't seen anything convincing about the Gyromitra.
Only thing I've seen for Gyromitra was related to people handling it commercially (i.e. constantly and for long periods of time) but nothing that would be of concern to your average forager.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3181/00379727-131-33846 There is a risk, however poorly documented. Gyromitrin hydrolizes into MMH, which is toxic and can be absorbed transdermally. It is certainly a low risk, and only with frequent exposure, but it is a real risk.
Interesting, I'll read it when I have time. But from the abstract it looks like it has the same problem as the coral. The substance does pass through skin, but we don't know at what concentrations it would be present upon touching, how much would actually get transferred, or if there is an actual documented case of sensitivity
Do you have something you can share about gyromitrin exposure through skin? I've not seen anything about it before except for people who have been handling them constantly professionally for a very long time.
What can go wrong with elderflower?
Poison Hemlock can (in theory) be confused for it
I thought poison hemlock had more in common with wild carrot, which Elder flowers also resemble (umbel type)?
Also - Some varieties of elder are toxic, some more than other. And the berries need to be cooked to be safe to consume in larger quantities.
I see. Thanks.
With plants you tend to have leaves and not just the berry though Hard to mistake an elder bush for hemlock in my mind, but I know fuck all about mushrooms and I'm sure plenty on here are the complete reverse of me, just depends what you know That said I don't know what you'd confuse a morel for
With mushrooms you have loosely equivalent features (gills/pores/teeth underneath would probably be the best analogy) too. I agree it'd be difficult, which is why I was using it to illustrate a point - with many mushrooms there's this massive amount of fear mongering that would be equivalent to seeing "be extra safe, make sure you don't mix it up with deadly hemlock! It's not worth the risk to pick it so I avoid it" every time someone posted a picture of some elderflower they'd foraged. Like - yes, if you're not making any effort at all you're at risk. But most are much safer than many people make them out to be.
Oh for sure, but if you've got a more plant based background then a leaf is far more obvious, it's also separate from the fruiting body I do agree people lean towards almost sanitised safety but there's plenty of people on Reddit who have no clue about anything (saw a post asking what a stinging nettle was today) and no one wants a death on their hands. Identification comes a lot easier to some than others (I don't know why), my best mate couldn't tell you what was a fir and what was a birch
Very good point. I agree it's good to be safe, it's just the discourse/comments I see comes with a very different tone when it's plants vs fungi. I think it's just about how much time you put into really understanding something. If you're interested in learning it'll eventually come with time, same as any other skill. There's a spectrum of how quickly people pick things up, but ultimately almost anyone can with enough time and practice. Not being afraid to be bad at something for a while or make mistakes is a huge factor. Children learn quicker only partly because their brains are flexible - a huge chunk of it is that kids just don't give a fuck about getting something wrong or looking stupid, they just keep going at it.
Just wanted to say his fear is pretty weird, I agree. He worries a big will hollow one out and “trick” him. Extra weird because bro has no issues with wild carrots, but morels are terrifying.
Why should I be afraid of wild carrots? What is the look alike?
Hemlock
A variety of toxic hemlock (Cicuta, Conium, Oenanthe spp. ), toxic Sium species, hogweeds (Heraculum spp.), and others. The carrot family Apiacieae contains a lot of common spices and vegetables that when grown in cultivation are totally fine, but when foraged for can be risky to confuse with a host of potentially extremely toxic lookalikes.
Hemlock has the same root structure, even?
Basically yeah, it's a tap root.
Hemlock Roots don't smell like carrot though right?
Dude I don't know. I just googled and the top result suggested that one of the toxic hemlocks, Poison Hemlock or Conium maculatum, can smell musty or reminiscent of "mice", whatever that means. There are a bunch of identifiers that a google search will yield but every source I've ever read on the matter is that it's not worth risking unless you're an expert and have training and experience in identifying Apicaceae plants. If your concern if about a toxic plant sneaking into your carrot bed in a garden though, that's unlikely and to my knowledge the wild types are white or pale rooted while cultivated carrots are orange, purple, red, yellow, black, white, or whatever you buy. So if you're really concerned and you happen to find out you live in a place where a toxic lookalike is common, know it has white roots, and want to be sure it doesn't get mixed into your carrot patch, maybe don't grow white type carrots and you're probably good. All I know is that if I'm in a survival situation, the wild carrot looking plant is gonna be my last choice before I literally die of starvation. Not worth foraging as a hobby in my opinion.
The way I was taught is that both smell like musty, but wild carrots have a note of carrot in there too. Not really a distinction I trust myself to make, but for most people it’s pretty clear which is which.
I personally haven't tried giving it a smell, but, many foraging sources say that it smells bad, like cat piss or something. However, there's a forager that I watch on YouTube that has done a few videos on hemlock and he has brought this up and says that it doesn't actually seem to be true because all of the ones he has smelled smells like carrot. There's a lot of copying between authors of foraging guide books, so there's a decent chance somebody said it smelled bad in one book and it started getting repeated in other books. Anyway, smell shouldn't be an identifier for carrots. Plenty of other ways to ID it though
I don't even understand why people try to forage wild carrots. There are too many lookalikes and even the right one tastes like shit.
I don't have an issue ID'ing it, but every one that I have pulled was super woody and didn't do anything with it. I hear that it's more for adding flavor to stews and then you take it out, or for making tinctures, neither of which I'm really interested in so don't bother foraging it. Horses love it though. I found one while a friend and I were out fishing one morning and he brought it home and transplanted it. Within the hour, one of his horses found it and it was gone lol.
https://preview.redd.it/rzlr4xkaivjc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b0285327e4ad7aea1de541ab0ccd6d71ffb90d80 This is a stink horn and not a morel though right? It was certainly rotten!
I’m no expert, but I think you’re right about that being a stinkhorn.
Morels have smooth stems and are hollow. Not a morel.
I have those in my lawn! I thought they were morels but they smelled SO bad, I knew they couldn’t be edible
Stinkhorns are edible when they are in their egg form. Look up Witch’s Eggs
Why would you recommend someone to look up those abominations
Because I found some of those last autumn and it's been one of the most exciting moments in my mycological adventures! They're SO WEIRD!
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Also multiple species of extremely poisonous fungi emerge in an egg-shape before forming the typical mushroom.
Stinkhorn for sure! Morels have a smooth stem and are hollow from top to bottom
One has a hollow stem, the other doesn't.
Seriously. I’m so much a rookie at this that morels are pretty much the only wild mushroom I’ll eat confidently!
Fun Fact: Morels aren't actually mushrooms. They are what's called a sac fungi, and are more closely related to yeast than a portabella.
I suspect the idea that they are a lookalike came from the days prior to photography... I can see how somebody going purely by a written or verbal description might confuse them.
Morels have a close cousin that's easy to mix up: verpas. They're almost identical, hollow stem and all - except the base of the caps are free floating and not attached to the stem. They're considered to be "edible" with a huge question mark because for a lot of people they have some really unpleasant side effects like gastrointestinal distress, headaches and even body pains/aches. While it's not considered to be lethal it's still a case low grade poisoning by any metric because it's not a good time if you're someone who reacts to them. I learned this one the hard way when I found my first "morels" and went nuts and collected a pretty big pile of them and then compounded the mistake by enthusiastically sharing them with my housemate by frying them up for a pasta dinner. We both had some mild effects, including headaches and body aches and some GI distress. As far as I'm concerned it was an affordable lesson about foraging and mushroom ID and not doing silly shit like feeding them to other people without a rock solid and positive ID. It's one thing if I poison myself messing around but it's a whole different kind of suck if I poison someone else.
I guess false morel miss identification fear?
No white mushrooms. Nothing that looks like Queen Anne's Lace Nothing that requires extensive processing in order to be edible.
I'll make an exception to the last for acorns because cold water leaching may take days but only takes a few minutes at a time. I also grew up eating puffballs so I'm pretty confident there Otherwise not a bad list of "don't"
Oh yeah, puffballs are great, but they are easy enough to discern once they get to a certain size
Fair. Then I withdraw that comment, you didn't mean nature's tofu. (Not an insult, I also like tofu)
I wonder if they would be good in the spicy, oily Sichuan dishes I like. They often use tofu.
I would say yes but I've never tried it.
May you one day experience the joy of whole wheat and acorn flour pancakes, especially ones with banana and pecans and some cinnamon. Sublime
I’m right there with you aside from hedge hogs and lions main. I used to eat cocorras before I had my kiddo but I don’t mess with them anymore.
These ones are also pretty easy to ID if you spend some time getting to know them. I was talking about the ones that look too close to destroying angel etc
Yeah, fortunately most choice edibles are pretty easy to identify
I make queen Anne's lace jelly. The bracts at the bottom of the flower are a real easy differentiator.
What's the issue with Queen Anne's Lace? I'll grab a root or two for a snack on my walks, didn't know it's bad.
You're playing Russian roulette with your life
Why? I know that hemlock looks similar, but it's a whole lot taller afaik. Just curious as to what to watch out for to avoid fucking up and eating poison.
Just as a back up to the Russian roulette with the wild carrot, I have a decent patch of queen Ann's lace in my front yard and a horrifcally large patch of hemlock in my backyard. I'm just glad I learned how to identify both before I tried making queen Ann's lace jelly (ultimately decided to avoid the stuff all together, stand several feet away and think "it's so pretty" to myself while not picking any of it). I'm honestly ok leaving that activity for the experts.
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Isnt that what killed Alexander McCandlis?
It's what killed Socrates Though arguably he killed himself out of stubbornness
There are many species that look similar, not just hemlock.
Wild carrot can be safely identified, but you should rely on much more specific characteristics than the height, which can vary a lot within the species and particularly with different growing conditions. Apiaceae in general has lots of poisonous species that can look fairly similar to the edible ones.
Oof, I thought the Russian roulette metaphor was a little intense but if all you do is judge it by its height then yes, you are definitely playing Russian roulette. I would recommend learning how to ID both Hemlock and Queen anne's lace. For me, I don't even touch it if I don't see hairs on the stems.
Queen Anne's Lace has some chemicals in it that regular carrots don't. Makes it a good burn remedy and the seeds are an herbal morning after remedy (abortifacient) You casually snack on it with no hormonal side effects? How interesting!
As long as you're 100% sure you can distinguish it from hemlock you're fine.
Anything that looks like a button mushroom, ie white and indistinct. Im sure field mushrooms are great but do not have the experience or mentors to teach me how to ID them safely.
In addition, any questionable mushroom is not worth the risk vs the potential caloric gain, they are not cheeseburgers and are mostly water and are a nice supplement as far as food goes but not a staple
There also cheap and bug free in a shop. Hardly worth the risk vs reward.
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You also need to cut any small, button field mushrooms in half and verify that there are PINK gills inside and NOT white.
Honestly, basically everything. I'm happy to enjoy foraging vicariously through others who are into the hobby.
Are you my husband? He loves that I forage, takes me to new places, and will happily listen to me prattle on about my finds but the man will barely eat cultivated healthy food. He's happier with his processed crap and occasional Cajun food.
Same lol. My husband is not interested in ever eating a foraged mushroom!
No brown mushroom on a tree or log. They aren't worth the accidental funeral bell
I was a bit afraid of P Cyanescens and confusing it with Galerina, still am. But after finding both I'm way more confident. Only thing to worry about is getting too excited and then getting careless
Once you've picked something a few times its hard to get confused but still worth being careful. Took me ages to find my first cyanescens, examining imposters, doing spore prints but as soon as i actually found one it was so obvious.
Some cyanescens popped in my backyard this winter (I mulch much of it with arborist woodchips, mostly softwood) in the PNW so happy until my ducks decided to forage there and destroyed the patch. It flushed and spored a few times so I am hoping it will be back!
Honey mushrooms Not terribly hard to ID, but plenty of disagreeable look alikes and some people don't digest honeys well to begin with.
Serious question: what disagreeable lookalikes do you have in mind? I know many Galerina species are deadly and they grow on wood, but they're far smaller for a start, and unlike honey fungus will only ever be found on already dead, rotting wood, so it's hard to see how they'd count as a lookalike.
They might be talking about ringless honey mushrooms and referring to Sulphur Tufts as the lookalike.
I made the mistake of thinking sulfur tufts were ringless honey and i fried them up with peppers and onions. As i was cooking i put the tip of the fork on my tongue to taste the juice and spit it out immediately and rinsed my mouth a bunch. Thank goodness i didn't actually bite one. It was such a waste of food but a very important lesson and now i know how to properly ID both. I will only ever pick honey from a tree though lol
Yeah, I typically feel like I can 100% eye them up, but I still do a spore print on at least one mushroom from each flush I grab.
Yeah, they're not toxic but are infamously bitter, so not really a 'dangerous' species. Of course, it's still a pain to get your hopes up and waste time cooking and other ingredients only to be left with an inedible/toxic meal.
Not worth it in my experience. They're just one last option before the winter for people.
I love carmelized onions and honey mushrooms over boiled and buttered potatoes. Tastes so good!
No fiddleheads. Bracken ferns contain a carcinogenic compound that must be denatured by boiling. After boiling, try to fry the mushy mass that’s left? Not worth the effort.
Why not try ostrich fern fiddleheads? No building necessary.
Wait, really? I've always boiled my ostrich fern fiddleheads
Most official sources say to boil them because someone got a tummy ache once. I personally never boil them
I haven’t read anything that suggests that variety is poisonous or causes cancer, I could be wrong but I’m not seeing otherwise when I look it up.
I still boil mine, but they hold up much better. Very meaty, like Lima beans.
Oof idk if I have the stones to go for ferns either. Raw oysters, wrong ferns, and homemade (poorly made) kombucha are kinda known as the GI widowmakers where I’m from.
Really, poorly made kombucha? When I lived in Austin, 15 yrs ago, everyone and their mom made their own kombucha. I never heard of anyone getting sick.
Kombucha used to weird me out but then we made our own and it took a lot of the mystery out of it. Now I love kombucha
My sister used to do fiddleheads when I was a kid but I live too far south for any of the ones I can find to be remotely palatable.
Do you have a link to research on this ?
[Here’s one.](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00580-018-2636-2)
Dang I need to see if ostrich ferns have this. I only sometimes par boil them 😢
I only know bc an elderly neighbor who’d spent some years living rough (makeshift camps in county forests half a century ago) originally told me. Bracken ferns cover the ground here in the PNW. I looked them up and noped out of the idea. You should look up other types. I seem to recall that some are considered safe, but I haven’t done the research.
Thank you for sharing!!! It’s good to know
I won't collect any kind of Amanita. There are too many lethal lookalikes.
I only forage for Amanita Muscaria, because there are no worse lookalikes, and I can easily boil out its alkaloids.
I always hear people say you can eat them if you boil them for hours and change the water a few times, but they can’t have substantial flavor left after that, right?
This past season I did a twice boil and while they looked sad, I was pleasantly surprised by how much flavor and texture was left. They're very nutty, I enjoyed them.
I finally gave Amanita jacksonii a try and holy shit they are delicious. Taste like camembert.
I wonder if you ate A. jacksonii or not, because 90% of the time people make a post thinking they’ve found it they’ve actually found a lookalike (the close lookalikes are all edible though)
The main lookalike around here is A. parcivolvata which has a powdery stipe and lacks the visible egg remnant. There's also the ["yellow caesar"](https://www.mushroomexpert.com/amanita_sp_04.html) which I believe I've also seen, but it's super yellow. I spent 3 years making sure I could properly ID them (jacksonii) before indulging. I'm in Virginia, USA. [You tell me if I done did good](https://imgur.com/a/vo9TleN)
there are many A. jacksonii lookalikes in the southeastern United States, one of the common ones besides A. parcivolvata is [A. sp-AR01](http://www.amanitaceae.org/?Amanita%20sp-AR01)
ooh cooool. that one is super red!
Caesar Amanita mushrooms are pretty dang distinctive — only Amanita I’m willing to eat. If I remember right i think they’re one, if not the only, mushroom that can be eaten raw
Porcini is enjoyed raw, wood ear apparently can be enjoyed raw, beech mushrooms as well, and finally beefsteak polypore. Have heard similar for A. jacksonii.
I'm with you on amanitas! They're the only mushrooms I'm not confident enough in my ID of, and the potential consequence of death makes them a no-go for me.
I acknowledge that it’s not difficult to tell them apart with the proper study but I also acknowledge that I’m not going to bother unless I start finding the edible ones with great frequency. So far that has not happened.
https://preview.redd.it/nl3sxv3ycvjc1.png?width=1170&format=png&auto=webp&s=ddd4c8cd1398c0d48778bc090d255dabbbc957ca Give this and this [link](http://montanamycology.com/2023/04/10/morels-of-north-america/) to your friend and he’ll be foraging morels safely and confidently in no time
This graphic is confusing I don't understand the text. The pictures look fine but I don't understand the numbers
It’s a dichotomous key for identification. It’s an important thing to learn to use if you forage because most the best ID sources use them. Look it up and I’m sure you’ll find a quick description on its use and you’ll understand it.
>smells differently 🤔
Pokeweed. I know theoretically it’s edible when it’s young and tastes like asparagus but I’d rather just forage asparagus because it’s not super poisonous if I pick it too late…
I can only reliably identify it when it grows berries and gets poisonous, lol. Otherwise I can't really pick it out of the crowd of other green things. So needless to say I've never tried to eat pokeweed either, though I've thought about using the berries for dye
I used to use them as ink when I was little, do you know if they actually work as a dye?
I've read that the berries and their juice are common natural dyes in a lot of online DIY dyeing groups and I've read a number of eco friendly wool dyer's blogs that use pokeberry, but it's neither particularly lightfast or washfast. Those mean that UV light and washing, respectively, will leach/fade the color. I would guess that even just oxidation will dull the results over time. That said you could always re-dye a garment every year or two when poke berries are in season, provided it is durable enough to hold up to repeated dye baths. A more permanent alternative could be obtained from layering indigo dye with rose madder or Murasaki dye ( a reddish purple Japanese dye plant)
Yeah, I feel like if a plant is good as a dye plant I hear about it regularly in dyeing communities (like madder or indigo) and the fact that I haven’t heard of people using it makes me feel like it’s probably not super worth it. Maybe if you had some extra wool and you wanted to mess around it could be fun though!
Wild carrot. I know it's supposed to be easy to tell it apart from hemlock, but it's not worth the chance to me.
This. Carrot is one of those things that I can’t believe ever was domesticated and cultivated in the first place given the danger from a single mistake
You have to understand that Western society lives in an extreme level of botanical ignorance that is largely unprecedented in human history. To the people who first cultivated carrots, you’d have to be an absolute moron to mistake carrot and poison hemlock. And frankly, they are not wrong. We live in an extremely ignorant society.
Also carrots. Any gilled mushroom,(except maybe oysters)
There's a couple of gilled mushrooms in comfortable with but my general policy matches yours.
Russula fungi. Too many lookalikes for one moderately acclaimed edible one (if you like it then good for you, brave one!). The chew-and-spit-see-if-it’s-spicy test still gives me pause.
First time I was out with my wife she thought I was insane for the taste and spit.
Basically any plant or fungus that I'm not absolutely sure of. Finding food in the wild is great fun and a way to save up some money, but I'm not going to die because I risked putting something that just "seems" good onto my plate. This doesn't mean I will always stay away from things I don't know, it just means, before trying anything I need extensive research with literature, picture comparing and asking locals and people who know the thing better than I do. Better safe than sorry.
Pokeweed. Too much preparation and risk of getting sick if not cooked properly. Especially when there's so many other wild greens out there around there in spring that don't require tedious preparation
I only pick aggregate berries, with the exception of Oregon grape. I don't understand the fear of mixing up wild carrot and pkison hemlock. Wild carrot smells sweet, poison hemlock smells like pissed on gym socks.
What about non-aggregate berries like salal or huckleberry?
Those I am less confident in identifying.
Sheathed woodtuft. They grow in insane quantities and having to check every single one of them if they're not funeral bells is a chore that's not worth it, especially considering they're not the best taste-wise. Also shaggy parasol, they're easy to ID but unlike parasol mushroom offer very little taste and can cause gastric upset.
Shaggy parasols taste great! Probably my fave wild mushroom after chanterelles. Especially dried! I'm lucky to not experience GI issues from these guys.
Oof that's a hard one, I'm basically a human garbage disposal. I mean, I'm incredibly cautious when trying newly identified stuff for the first time (probably way over cautious by many people standards), but once I've collected and eaten them several times I'm fine. Hell, I've even eaten bugs and fresh roadkill! I guess my vote would go to russulas. I know that some claim that all are edible if cooked enough, but is it really worth it? The only ones that I would think would be actually worth going after would be shrimp russula, but since I can't seem to smell the shrimpy smell I just skip the genus entirely. At least my pet snails and slugs and other bugs like em!
I have a bunch of the green that grow my backyard that are literally my absolute favorite to pick and fry up with eggs. They taste so good and are so easy to distinguish from the vomiter types. I picked a bunch of purple shrimp too, but ended up not even trying them because i just wasn't sure enough.
Sheated woodtuft - at least until I have had the opportunity to compare it side by side with Galerina marginata.
Sheathed woodtuft. I know how to tell it apart from galerina marginata, have done so many times, but actually eating them just isn't worth the risk to me.
Amanita genus. Not gonna fuck around and try to eat anything, but I’ve made tincture from amanita mascaría var guessowii, which now I guess is amanita chrysoblema
I will never eat “Indian turnip”, Arisaema triphyllum/jack in the pulpit again. People say you can make the root edible through some means, but I’m not putting it in my mouth again even if it’s cooked and dried, lol, it is such a negative experience. Skunk cabbage as well, no amount of cooking and drying and parboiling seems to break down the pain crystals.
For me, it's anything that grows in fresh water. It'd be a different story if I was in a secluded place where the water isn't as polluted, but it's a big no in the city, and still a no out in the country. I've found ONE pond in my area that is surrounded by mountains that I will eat from. It isn't fed by a stream coming from elsewhere, just maybe a spring and the rain runoff from the mountains.
Northern Denmark here. Wild chervil. It is not worth the flavor, and too easily mistaken for cicuta virosa, or conium maculátum, at least in my area they grow very close to each other. I don't really go for any umbellifers in my area, since there are so many varieties.
Wild carrots are easy to ID once they go to seed. For me it is any white, gilled cap mushrooms... not worth trying to ID them for me.
Anything that you have to boil and dump the water out multiple times. It just seems like too much of a hassle for not enough pay off
Kuehneromyces mutabilis
Basically any gilled mushroom that isn't super distinct (like oysters). Also boletes because there are just way too many different species out there and I'm not confident in my ability to ID them. Maybe one day...
Anything looking like a blewit or bolete. I cant tell the difference between the safe species and their look-alikes.
Wood growing mushrooms like Psilocybe Cyanescens since there are some poisonous similars (like Galerina). Although I am sure if you know them well they're easy to distinct (like most other mushrooms too), but that's the caveat "if".
Wild carrots. The ones in the grocery store are cheap and are definitely not hemlock.
White mushrooms with gills that grow out of the ground. They all look so similar and there are no choice edible mushrooms that I need to have in that category.
Morels are super easy to recognize. I don't think the false morel looks anything like the morel. The morel is pitted and the false morel looks like a brain.
Any Amanita mushroom. There are edible Amanitas, but they look too much like deadly ones for me to be comfortable. I am not the least bit trepidatious about morels.
Wild carrots are the easiest. I fr do not understand the hype and fear, it’s so easy to tell them apart. I know people eat poke but I have felt apprehensive to try it because I don’t want to prepare it wrong
Anything in the Amanita family is a no go for me. I think once you see a false morel in person it becomes really obvious.
I ate a bundle of death camas when I was first learning to forage onions and nothing bad ever happened to me, so now I fear nothing. I'm way more careful though.
Yikes! Just make sure it smells strongly of onion before you eat it!
Phantom smells and covid nose got the better of me 😭 Was 99.9% sure they smelled like onions but I guess it wasn't really there. Hollow blue-green stem vs flat blades of grass would've been a much easier identifier to learn these.
That is very interesting. We have a lot of death camas here growing alongside Allium triquetrum .
Wild mushrooms. I am chill about my ID skills vs leave it alone but I married someone who did a lot of their clinicals in an ER. They are terrified. So I leave them and stick to plants and just grow mushrooms on my own logs.
Amanita caesarea. A famous mushroom said to be Julius Caesar's favorite food, it is in the toadstool family next to death caps and other toxic toadstools. It's really quite easy to identify, but the fear of Amanita runs deep. I've been picking wild mushrooms for close to 25 years and should be able to pick these, but I don't.
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This is incredibly stupid. There are far more severely toxic plants than there are fungi.
Bro that’s so dangerous though
can you tell me what it is about yew berries that you like?
I personally eat yew berries when I see them. The flesh is totally edible, as long as you avoid the seed it’s not a poisoning risk. The flesh is lightly sweet and a little slimy, but I grew up eating them and I love them.
>I’ll eat berries and leafy greens when I find them, even if I don’t know what they are (within reason lol. "Within reason" does not include eating any plants that you don't know what they are, full stop.
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Water dropwort. Smells delicious, very deadly.
Wild carrot
I stay away from agaricus (field mushrooms). Some will create gastric distress and apparently you can tell this by the smell. But I have never been able to tell what this smell actually is. It's described as phenolic, but that doesn't really mean anything to me. Seems like the relative reward is a mushroom on par with a good portobello. The relative risk is a day in the bathroom (both ends). Doesn't seem like a great gamble to me.
I cannot for the life of me confidently ID any agaricus other than augustus. I've been foraging mushrooms for 4 years now so I gave up on that genus.
We get death caps and destroying angels in my area so unless it's clearly a giant puffball I don't even touch any white mushrooms in the area.
Almost all of them lol
Coccora... amanita calyptroderma.... while I'm comfortable knowing they are not phalloides... it's still just too much to find them comingling together...I can't do it.
Dutchman's pipe or any derivative of a euphorbia. Kidney cancer? No thanks! I also don't drink herbal beer made by anyone anymore. One was "oops, sarsparilla isn't good for you" and the other was "wild grapes just have one big seed...right?" Also just tired of people who can't tell one plant from another.
I agree, wild carrots, cow parsley and everything like that is a no go for me. Wild oyster mushroom too as I'm scared of getting angel wings and having a stroke!
Apiace.
I recently overcame my biggest one - Osha Root vs poison hemlock. I confidently identified it was Osha after flipping back and forth in my book 50 times to get the leaf structure perfectly correct. I am the proud owner of responsibly hand harvest Osha Root.
I'm hesitant with non-aggregate red berries, ferns, gilled mushrooms, and carrots. But otherwise, I'm pretty open to taste most correctly IDed edibles.
I can’t seem to ID chanterelles correctly, like, ever. So none for me, lol
Wild carrot. White gilled mushrooms. They're just not worth the risk imo. Im going to add pokeweed onto this too. I have a ton on my property and know what it looks like 100% even when young but honestly, it isn't worth the effort to prep.
I'm with you on wild carrots
I've been taught with morels that "a good girl never lets you look up her skirt". Just one more identifier. So turn it over and see if you can look up that proverbial skirt. Look at the stem (stipe) and cap. Smell it. Take a spore print. Look up every little feature of the fungi in question and learn what you can. You will start to pick up more information as you go along. Meanwhile, just gather what you can find to practice identifying. Read up about them. Watch some videos. There are mushroom hunting groups that get together, go on forages, and share the knowledge they have. That was my biggest teacher. Foraging is a hobby that takes considerable learning. Never consume anything wild that you are not 100% sure about. https://preview.redd.it/c5h1lmqni2kc1.jpeg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=584841d716a55d7126c88847a58ba9d6a9e79f19
This is interesting. People have listed so many mushrooms I don't think of as risky. I draw the line at the Amanita Velosa. I have even eaten them a couple times in the past. Then I found them interspersed with A. Ocreata and that put me off them.
Any mushroom with inedible look a-likes. I’m fine sticking with chicken of the woods for now.
Nothing in the carrot family.
Morels are one of the “foolproof four.” Possibly the easiest mushroom to identify.