The message
from Sacha contains these words:

I don't know more than I've read in the papers but it did say the family had
been mushroom gathering for years. It just throws a light on its dangers,
IMO.

There's mushroom-gathering and mushroom-gathering, though.

In fact, the chances are that you could eat every mushroom you find for
years without coming to grief. Some hit you cumulatively (Paxillus
involutus) and some get to work immediately (Russula emetica, Entomala
lividum) often with no very serious result.

The poisonous Amanitas however, generally wait for up to twelve hours
before pouncing, by which time the active alkaloids are well-absorbed.
It can take up to a week for a death-cap victim to die, and apart from a
short period of remission in the first or second day, that period in
agony.

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


One article I read remarked on the similarity between horse mushrooms and
another very similar one which is dangerous and says that even experienced
people sometimes mistake the two. I have no experience of any of these, so
I really can't comment.

I can eat them. One person in ten (approximately) can't.

They're not dangerous, but can make you quite sick.

Both the poisonous ones (Agaricus xanthoderma -yellow-staining mushroom
- and A. pilatianus) are easily identifiable because they smell strongly
of carbolic, and in the younger specimens, the base of the stipe colours
bright yellow IMMEDIATELY on cutting. Both stain yellow strongly where
bruised.

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