5 ms·
I've been foraging mushrooms for 30+ years, and I triple-check every single specimen before cooking it. The idea of a novice forager using an app to identify mu
by dmitrybrant 4y ago
I've been foraging mushrooms for 30+ years, and I triple-check every single specimen before cooking it. The idea of a novice forager using an app to identify mushrooms is... unconscionable! Like... breathtakingly stupid.
I've commented on this before, but it continues to baffle me how poorly-educated our public is about wild plants, berries, and mushrooms. And stories like this just perpetuate the fear (and stigma?) around foraging, when in fact there's a whole universe of flavors and textures to be had from wild mushrooms that are simply better, and more fun, than the grocery store.
- KerrAvon 4y agoCuriosity: do you find that you (at 30+ years) are so good at identification in the wild that you don’t find any “bad” specimens once you get them home, or do you still catch some outliers where you needed to look at them more closely? Or does the process involve taking them home for closer examination?
- dmitrybrant 4y agoTo be honest I don't recall the last time I've ever accidentally picked up a poisonous specimen along with the good ones I was intending to pick. At this point it's such second-nature that telling apart an edible vs. poisonous mushroom is like telling a bottle of milk from a bottle of Drano. And yet I still examine each one at home before putting it in the pot. The other thing is that the truly deadly varieties, such as the subject of this article - Amanita phalloides, are really not that hard to avoid. When you're a novice forager, there are plenty of varieties that don't look remotely like Amanita, and are much easier to differentiate. There are some hardcore foragers who even consume certain varieties of Amanita (some of which are edible!), but to me this would be too much of a hassle, since it would involve spore prints and maybe even microscopy of the spores to be absolutely sure.
- ncann 4y agoI think I read somewhere before about how if a mushroom is white, then stay away from it. How true is this from your experience?
- dmitrybrant 4y agoUsing that rule of thumb, you would successfully avoid Amanita virosa (destroying angel), but you could still get poisoned by Amanita phalloides (death cap) which has a pale-green cap. I don't endorse any rules-of-thumb for foraging, but a much better differentiator for beginners is whether the mushroom has pores vs. gills under the cap. There are virtually no deadly varieties that have pores.
- trhr 4y ago> There are virtually no deadly varieties that have pores. Never heard this one before. Adding it to my bug out notes. Thanks!
- Matticus_Rex 4y agoNote that there's at least one, and that a number of them will still make you sick. Put a few common pored edibles (Laetiporus sp., Cantharellus sp., Grifola frondosa, etc.) in your notes for sure though, with basic descriptions, as even their few remote lookalikes (at least pored ones -- some people think Omphalotus sp. look like Cantharellus for some reason) are just going to give you a moderate stomach upset at worst, and may be edible themselves.
- e12e 4y ago> Put a few common pored edibles (... Cantharellus sp Chantarelles don't have pores?
- Matticus_Rex 4y agoDerp; I meant non-gilled. Thanks for the correction. The false gills on chanterelles are a major part of why they're so accessible to new foragers.
- Matticus_Rex 4y agoAmanita sec caesarae doesn't require spore prints or microscopy to be affirmatively ID'd as safe. You have to check for the presence of a few characteristics, but it's a fairly safe ID for experienced foragers. Blushers and grisettes, however... I've seen too many people in mushroom groups misidentify those to ever recommend them to others.
- cormullion 4y agoMost Amanitas have a prominent base (volva) but I expect too many pickers just pull out by the stem so might not notice it.
- masswerk 4y ago"Old school" foragers typically stick to a few mushrooms to be safe. Meaning, they have quite an expertise on 3 or 4 kinds of mushrooms (or, even more likely, just a couple of them) and are staying away from anything else, especially, if there is a similar, poisonous mushroom. (At least, this is what all I happen to know are doing.) Also, if you aren't 100% confident, stay away from it. (And there is the real problem with apps, since lack of confidence is the entire raison d'être of these apps.)
- junglistguy 4y agorather 20-30 but I live in europe, in america you are different kind of human :D
- trhr 4y agoAmerica has thousands, if not millions, of invisible people living from the land and amongst the trees -- but you're right that our city dwellers don't know many wild plants. The most obvious examples are our two major trails, the Pacific Coast and the Appalachian, which take a full year to hike and are done by tens of thousands annually.
- varajelle 4y agoWhen I was younger I would go foraging and I would indeed stick to just the few species of very common mushroom that grew in the woods near me, that I could recognise for sure, with very distinct characteristics. Then I moved to another city just a few hundreds of km away, and I couldn't collect many mushrooms anymore. The mushrooms variaties were quite different. The ones I could recognise were not so common anymore, and I didn't know the other ones. I stopped foraging now, because I don't have the urge to learn mushrooms again.
- jeffrallen 4y agoThis is the way. Grandma teaches you her 3 or 4 favorites, you find them for her, and then she checks them herself. My wife is passing on this passion to our kids and my 4 year old already knows (1) which are good and (2) the only way to eat a wild mushroom is on the plate, after mommy checked and cooked it.
- quirino 4y agoWhich method do you use for checking the mushrooms?
- jerrysievert 4y agonot op, but ... books with photos, very in-depth descriptions, pictures and descriptions sent to friends who also forage, and when all else fails, spore samples. I've only had to make it to spore samples 6-7 times because I couldn't identify with the first three methods. I will note that I never ate any of the ones I took spore samples of - because I was then able to correctly identify them as poisonous (or close enough that I wasn't willing to take the chance).
- dmitrybrant 4y agoIt's cultural knowledge passed down through generations. Mushroom foraging is super popular in Russia and other Slavic countries, and my grandmother taught me most of the fundamentals before we immigrated to the US, and I continued to study field guide books on my own. When you get to know the specific bits of anatomy of the mushroom body, the trees with which they're symbiotic, the seasons in which they occur, etc., then identifying different varieties becomes as clear as identifying a baseball vs. a tennis ball.
- duskwuff 4y agoIncidentally, I've heard that a significant number of people get poisoned by mushrooms when they learned to recognize edible mushrooms in another country (often China or Eastern Europe), then move to the US and try to forage for mushrooms here. Knowing one region's edible/poisonous mushrooms doesn't make you an expert on anything outside that region.
- dreamcompiler 4y agoI've only eaten wild mushrooms once. They were picked by a friend I trusted who had been picking them for 20+ years, and he ate them at the same time I did. He damn sure was not using an app on his phone to identify them.
- WalterBright 4y agoI'd eat them the next day after he ate them.
- varsketiz 4y agoIn many mishrooms the poison takes 72 hours or so to destroy your liver without symptoms, so waiting 24 hours would not help.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- superjan 4y agoI do hunt mushrooms occasionally, and an app is useful if you understand the limitations. If the app gives you a name, the next thing to do is consult a mushroom book to learn if there is a risk of mixups with poisenous species. In Western Europe, for instance, there is are edible wild champignons that are very similar “groene knol ameniet”, which is deadly. I recently read that fatalities are on the rise because east europeans that migrate here look for wild champignons but do not know about the poisenous lookalike: it does not grow in the forests they grew up in. Every region has some mushrooms species that you can learn to easily recognize and that don’t have “evil twins”. You should be aware that this varies by area. So apps can be a useful tool but a good book that covers the region where you pluck is essential.
- jeffrallen 4y agoThe problem is that the culture of secrecy around mushrooms makes it uncomfortable to ask those questions in a new place. I learned mushrooms in a certain place, and even after 10 years in a different place I have not learned the local specialities.
- WalterBright 4y agoIf I was an expert, I still wouldn't eat them after triple-checking them. I don't think they taste so good that they're worth any risk. It's not like they're chocolate.
- MikePlacid 4y agoActually gathering mushrooms is not about the taste. It’s about the process. Like hunt, but without killing any animal, or like fishing but without killing any fish. There is a nice book about this aspect of mushroom gathering, The Third Hunt by Vladimir Soloukhin: https://www.nhbs.com/the-third-hunt-book https://www.nhbs.com/the-third-hunt-book I agree with the thread-starter that some actions look incredibly stupid, like an attempt to eat something similar to Amanita (indeed, no taste is worth the risk) or the belief that there any no deadly mushrooms in any given place on the planet. Exclusion first - as kids we were allowed to touch Boletuses only, and then some distinct non-boletuses that have no poisonous lookalikes. But the described actions are not actually stupidity if you think about it. It’s an attempt to do something that can be done safely only if you are immersed in a culture that preserve and cherish knowledge on this subject and promotes safe indulgement in related pleasures. We can respect all cultures, probably. But to gather and eat mushrooms safely you should follow (not necessarily) a culture you have grown up in but culture of people or groups who know how to do it safely.
- junglistguy 4y agoI collect for taste, they are delicious
- junglistguy 4y agoIf everyone was like you, we would never have made it to the moon
- elteto 4y ago… it does look like a mushroom, maybe you are onto something here.
- 4y ago
- sp332 4y agoYes, and at least one of these apps got eviscerated in its "Show HN" post. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14840678 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14840678
- notch656a 4y agoIt's maddening to me that Melzer's reagent, which is commonly used in identification for microscopic inspection of fungi, is a controlled substance.
- Metacelsus 4y agowell it has about 50% chloral hydrate . . .
- yieldcrv 4y ago> The idea of a novice forager using an app to identify mushrooms is... unconscionable! Like... breathtakingly stupid. Out of curiosity, have you used any of the apps? They're really good at flora, and include identification of fungi because they are outdoors and attached to soil and flora. They greatly amplify the most passive and casual interest to something far beyond the tools employed professionals would have. Even the state (but thats a low bar, admittedly). But the identification isn't for eating things. But knowing that people do that, and for mushrooms I would say there is a case for a warning label in the apps, after positive identification of some things.
- dmix 4y agoSo to be clear the app didnt say it was edible or makes any recommendations about eating them, it only said it potentially looks like its from a family of mushrooms which the author found out included edible mushrooms. Technically the person themselves made the leap to calling it edible. Although it wouldn’t hurt for the flora identification app to have warnings about not eating things unless you’re very certain and have expertise on the subject. Or make it clear it’s a well informed guess not a perfect identification.
- yieldcrv 4y agoThat's right. Its more than "technically", the article just glosses over it. The person went out of their way, but I could see many people going down the same path.
- Matticus_Rex 4y agoI've used the apps for both flora and mushrooms, and they're much worse at mushroom identification. I always tell beginners to, at most, use an app to figure out where in an ID book to start looking.
- bonoboTP 4y agoNow I wonder if this thing only exists in Hungary, but here there are lots of mushroom checking stations, typically near markets, where an expert checks your bag of mushrooms. They have an official license from the food safety authority and there is a central register for these mushroom experts. My dad always brought the stuff we picked there, it was close by enough and it's just a totally normal thing here. I would imagine it would be a nightmare to do this in the US due to legal liabilities.
- ohbleek 4y agoI can confirm that we do not have such a thing in the US. I wonder how this began in Hungary. I’m sure plenty of mycologists would be eager to have this kind of role in the US.
- jeffrallen 4y agoIt exists in Switzerland too, but in a slightly different form, which differs again by canton. But if your grandma checks them, no need. :)