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Rachael Dixon, 53, dies in suspected mushroom poisoning (Ballarat). (www.news.com.au)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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A 53-year-old mother and personal trainer has been identified as the victim of a suspected mushroom poisoning at a wellness retreat in regional Victoria on Saturday night.

Rachael Dixon and two other people are believed to have consumed mushrooms at the Soul Barn Creative Wellbeing Centre in Clunes near Ballarat.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Noticing "wild foraged herbs" mentioned...

I may be biased as I don't like AI, but apparently there are some dodgy AI written mushroom foraging guides on sale that give wrong info/dangerous suggestions. Do you think that might be part of the rash of recent mushroom poisonings?

This warning goes for both food purposes and recreational purposes

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (2 children)

I don't forage, but from what I've heard mushrooms are known to be difficult to correctly identify and require both base foraging knowledge and also extensive local knowledge of species native to the area. It wouldn't surprise me if these people were going off of some American guide and ended up misidentifying a native species

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Especially as there are still a lot of UNIDENTIFIED native species here in Victoria. Some estimate that up to 70% of native mushrooms have not yet been formally identified. Or evaluated in any way for danger or edibility. This info dates from about 10 years ago so situation might have improved since then.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Yeah. Foraging is a cool hobby but you put your life on the line eating anything that isn't reliably identifiable

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

Wow! I didn't know there were that many! Seems like a bit of a mugs game then tbh

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Yep. There are whole populations of scientists that would loooooovvveeee to spend more time researching mushrooms/fungi/slime moulds, but the funding is scant and fragile. You might like to check out this website for the latest news on slime moulds (which are fascinating) - www.dictybase.org
This is a database by scientists for scientists but some of the articles are accessible to us normals and are a fascinating look at genomics in general. Worth a look if you don't mind looking up the vocabulary nearly all the time.

[–] Taniwha420 1 points 7 months ago

Oh yeah, and the number of times I've heard people who obviously don't know what they're talking about look at an Agaricus sp. mushroom and confidently answer, "oh yeah, that's a field mushroom. It's good." No. It's not. A good number of species in that genus will fuck your liver up real good and even kill you.