The message
from echinosum contains these words:

The stories suggested that they had eaten some rare Cortinarius spp as
a mistake for chanterelles. As an expert said, it is a very odd mistake
to make. So they may have picked fungi often, but apparently without
knowing very much about what they were doing.

I never eat any Cortinarius - there are too many poisonous ones in that
genus, and sometimes it's difficult to tell which is what.

Any even relatively competent mushroom collector can't mistake a
Cortinarius for a Cantharellus whether a Chanterelle - Cantharellus
infundibuliformis (French - which is the correct usage), or a Girolle -
Cantharellus cibarius - which in Britain is wrongly called a
Chanterelle.

Cortinarius specioissimus is roughly 'chanterelle' colour, and is
deadly. It is also very rare, and I know of ony one incidence of it
being found here (FSVO here - in Scotland, actually.) I only know one
edible cortinarius, and know of only two. One I wouldn't be able to
identify positively, and the other I avoid.

Given the known risks in mushroom collecting, it would be an unusual
person who thought to carry it out without the basics of being able to
distinguish what they are collecting from known poisonous species of
some similarity. For example, if we are picking mushrooms, we need to
know how not to pick death caps in error.

It is very difficult to pick a death-cap in error - the gills are dead
white, and the cap from olive green to (washed-out specimen) yellowish.
Spring Amanita and the destroying angel, however, have white caps.

Possibly the worst killer is the old wives' tale that edible mushrooms
peel. The death-cap, destroying angel and spring amanita all peel.

TAAAW, no mushroom blackens silver. (eggs do, though...)

Likewise, with chanterelles,
we need to know enough so as not to pick false chanterelles;

False chanterelles are generally edible, BUT in some people they can
cause hallucinations.

but a
Cortinarius would be even less like a chanterelle than a false
chanterelle. Interestingly, they did discover that hard-to-find piece
of information, that the particular rare Cortinarius, although very
poisonous, is very tasty. Death caps are also very tasty: we know this
because they are fairly common and occasionally masquerade as field
mushrooms, so are the most commonly eaten fatal species.

Well, probably destroying angels, but this is because of the 'peeling'
myth in a lot of cases, and maybe in others, their being eaten in the
'button' stage.

--
Rusty
Direct reply to: horrid dot squeak snailything zetnet point co period uk
Separator in search of a sig