this post was submitted on 24 May 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago (21 children)

Is the main visual difference just the stem or whatever it's called being much longer?

[–] [email protected] 33 points 7 months ago (18 children)

IIRC, the only definitive way to ID mushrooms is by making a spore print - and even then you need to know what you're doing.

Just doesn't seem worth the risk to me.

[–] [email protected] 53 points 7 months ago (12 children)

nah it's generally fairly easy to ID mushrooms, the problem is just that if you miss a feature and mistake it for another, you'll fucking liquidize from the inside out.

This is the same reason that you never touch something that looks like a carrot plant in the wild, because it could be that one plant that kills you 3 times over.

I agree that it's generally not worth the risk though, hence why those who pick mushrooms (which is pretty standard to do here in the nordics) stick to like 5 species who have no dangerous lookalikes and actually taste good and are easy to find.

Here in sweden 90% of what people pick is chanterelles or boletes, whose entire families look effectively the same and at worst simply don't taste good. Boletes have ONE slightly toxic species in sweden, and it's bright red and only grows on one island in the baltic sea.

[–] teejay 25 points 7 months ago (3 children)

This is the same reason that you never touch something that looks like a carrot plant in the wild

That's funny. I was just thinking to myself "Fuck all this mushroom noise. I'll just stick to eating carrots, no way to mistake those for something else." I guess I'll die quickly in the coming apocalypse.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago (1 children)

This is why we befriend the people who can reliably ID plants and know what is safe to eat, you wouldn't survive an apocalypse alone regardless.

[–] Mirshe 2 points 7 months ago

Mhm, society persists even through collapse scenarios mostly for exactly this reason. John the Butcher in 13th century Scotland might have lost his entire village to The Plague, but those guys in the village 3 miles down the road still have people who know how to forage, or hunt, or grow food, etc etc etc.

[–] shneancy 3 points 7 months ago

yeah do watch out for hemlock plants, they look very similar to wild carrots

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Spotted water hemlock

"The confusion with parsnips can be fatal as C. maculata is extremely poisonous. It is considered to be North America's most toxic native plant."

"The chief poison is cicutoxin, an unsaturated aliphatic alcohol that is most concentrated in the roots. Upon human consumption, nausea, vomiting, and tremors occur within 30–60 minutes, followed by severe cramps, projectile vomiting, and convulsions."

It supposedly tastes good though.

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