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Foraging is a great hobby as long as you approach it with respect. With mushrooms, you start by learning a few foolproof species that have no close lookalikes,
by Matticus_Rex 5y ago
Foraging is a great hobby as long as you approach it with respect. With mushrooms, you start by learning a few foolproof species that have no close lookalikes, and then you learn species by species from there. After a few years of doing it regularly, you'll be pretty comfortable IDing (with a field guide, and occasional help from a good Facebook group -- most regions have a good one, and you need one that's fairly close to you because they'll know the ones that grow near you). I started getting interested around 2013, but didn't eat a foraged mushroom until 2016. I've eaten around 30 different species that I've foraged at this point, all from my area (most within a mile and a half of my house).
- plutonorm 5y agoNope. Nope. Nope. No way is a mushroom from outside passing my lips. Good god they all look the same and even if they don't - are you 99.999999999999 percent sure?
- laegooose 5y agoNitpick: a healthy young person has ballpark 1 in 10 thousand chance of dying per year. So it's enough to be 99.9999% sure because extra nines don't really make your life safer.
- loki49152 5y agoI'm personally willing to throw a couple of 9's on that figure to avoid dying the mushroom death.
- Matticus_Rex 5y agoThis is one reason I generally advise beginners to learn the few deadly mushroom species alongside any edible ones they're learning, and why some edible mushrooms are considered to be for more advanced foragers because of the possibility of confusion for beginners. But there are many species of edible mushrooms with zero toxic (much less deadly) lookalikes, which is where people generally start.
- pvaldes 5y agoAgree. Better safe than sorry. If you don't have a minimum experience in mycology don't do culinary experiments.
- Matticus_Rex 5y agoYes... and -- the minimum experience needed to identify, say, chicken of the woods (Laetiporus spp.), chanterelles (Cantharellus spp.), or lion's mane/bear's tooth/coral tooth (Hericium spp.) is very, very low.
- Matticus_Rex 5y agoIf you learn just a few things about mushrooms, they stop looking the same. Also, there are only a handful of deadly mushrooms in any given region, and you can learn those specific species as well. It's not that hard to get to 99.9999999% sure that you're eating an edible species.
- pama 5y agoAn old Check proverb says something like: all mushrooms are edible; some of them only once :-)
- Matticus_Rex 5y agoThat one and "there are old mushroom hunters and bold mushroom hunters, but no old, bold mushroom hunters" get told about once per day per thousand people in any online mushroom group.