The message
from (Mike Lyle) contains these words:

How interesting. I wish I had not thrown away my book on edible and
inedible fungi. I did it when I realised that I simply did not have the
courage to pick and eat a fungus described in the book and "recognised" by
me. Except for Jew's ear and giant puff balls. It is impossible to
mistake
them.

My own feelings entirely! A friend once found an unexpected flush of
mushrooms in the back garden of a house we rented, and treated himself
to a huge meal of steak and mushrooms. After a while he started
feeling a bit funny in the guts, and finally went to bed very sorry
for himself, leaving a note on the kitchen table saying "I have eaten
'mushrooms' from the garden". Slightly to his surprise he woke the
next morning to find himself entirely alive, and was obliged to
conclude that his symptoms had resulted from a combination of
over-imagination and over-eating.

Could have been one of the two yellow-staining mushrooms which look like
horse mushrooms, but are poisonous to around one person in ten.

Continued eating of them may result in unexpected poisoning and
subsequently a total mushroom allergy.

Some universities, botanical gardens, and county naturalist trusts do
public Fungus Forays in the autumn, though: being shown by an expert
must be the only sensible way to learn.

I received a rowlocking on another ng about a year ago for the
misdemeanour of suggesting that fungi were plants: they certainly
weren't animals or minerals, I reasoned. But I too was out of date: I
checked in a school biology book, and found that, during my
forty-plus-years' absence of mind, life on Earth had indeed very
creatively divided itself into several new categories. But I did know
that they didn't have cells: the adhesive bit of my education had left
me knowing what "vascular" meant.

I think you must mean that their cells do not contain chlorophyll?

This enormous clone business: isn't it also true that a hillside
covered with bracken may sometimes actually be covered by a single
plant?

Yes.

--
Rusty http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/hi-fi/tqt.htm
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