this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2024
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Mushroom Guides (mander.xyz)
submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] FinishingDutch 106 points 4 months ago (5 children)

Yep. Years ago I interviewed someone for a radio program here in the Netherlands. This was a forest ranger, on the topic of people foraging for mushrooms. It was the hip thing to do at the time.

He explained how wildly dangerous it is for average people to do. Especially when looking up things online.

He showed me two images that looked basically identical. He explained to me that one mushroom was edible and delicious. And that it could be found in the forests in the United States. The other, identical looking mushroom can be found in European forests. That one liquifies your internal organs and causes you to shit yourself to an agonising death.

He explained that each year a handful of people die from eating it. Because they looked up a guide online, and failed to understand that there’s regional differences between edible and deadly mushrooms. And by the time they got medical attention, there was nothing that could be done.

I’m not a fan of mushrooms anyway, but I’d certainly never be dumb enough to go pick some myself. That shit’ll get you killed.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 4 months ago (3 children)

In France you can take them to a pharmacy and they will be able to determine the mushrooms for you

[–] [email protected] 41 points 4 months ago (2 children)

The local pharmacist in my parent's village died from accidentally eating poisonous mushrooms ☹️

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 months ago

Should've done the French Pharmacists' education instead :p

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago

Modern witchdoctor. Haha, metal.

[–] FinishingDutch 6 points 4 months ago

Neat, I didn’t know that was a thing that they offered. Sounds like a good idea to keep people safe from stupid mistakes.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

It's very trusting to let a professional from an unrelated profession make life or death decisions for you

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

It's part of their education, not only what is edible, also what to do/prescribe when mushrooms are ingested that cause malicious symptoms.

So it's most literally part of their profession.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 months ago

I will never understand impulsive people who just DO things, with little thought or worry of consequences.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago

I just buy them in a growkit, that way they are fun an enjoyable

[–] shneancy 6 points 4 months ago

honestly even worse is destroying angel. That thing (well same species(?) different kinds but all as deadly) can be found on all continents! and it looks similar to yum mushrooms in all places :) number 1 cause for mushroom related deaths, and it also liquidifies your organs! whoo!

i'm so glad the texture of mushrooms makes my skin crawl so i never get the idea to go out there and forage them for food. Wikipedia link 4 different edible shrooms that look similar to that one and to my eyes they all look the same, and idk about you but the level of anxiety I'd feel preparing dinner with something that is as far as i can tell edible would be unreal

[–] ChickenLadyLovesLife 6 points 4 months ago (3 children)

He explained to me that one mushroom was edible and delicious. And that it could be found in the forests in the United States. The other, identical looking mushroom can be found in European forests. That one liquifies your internal organs and causes you to shit yourself to an agonising death.

Oh god, this wasn't "chicken of the woods" (big orange mushroom that grows out of dead tree trunks), was it? Adam Ragusea did a video not long ago about it and acknowledged that mushrooms could be dangerous but figured this one was so easy to identify that there was no risk to telling people to forage it. Even if a mistake is a one-in-a-million chance, the dude has like 2.5 million subscribers so he might have killed 2 or 3 people with it.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Probably not Chicken. We get it here in Europe as well, though it's not as abundant as far as I know. We picked it in a course here, but I haven't eaten it since America where it's more trendy.

https://mushroomexam.com/mushroom_look_alikes.html

[–] ChickenLadyLovesLife 5 points 4 months ago

That page makes me not even want to eat mushrooms from the grocery store.

[–] Lionheadbud 7 points 4 months ago

If chicken of the woods is growing from a yew tree, it can be dangerous.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

It sounds like the answer to your question is probably within that same video you watched.