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"Carole" wrote in message
et...

Crikey - didn't know you could eat honey fungus ! The amount I've lobbed
off that stump and destroyed........what a waste - and I'm a vegetarian
too !


My Collins Wildlife Trust Guidebook to Mushrooms of B & E advises picking
young and eating as soon as possible, warning "as some ill effects or more
or less serious instances of poisoning may occur, possibly as a result of
the later action of micro-organisms"

Is this the Collins guide by Morton Lange & F. Bayard Hora (first
published 1963)?

If it is, bin it - or at the very least, amend it.

I haven't correlated what it says on other species, but it gives some
seriously dangerous advice on Paxillus involutus - it says: "Harmless if
cooked, of little value; slightly poisonous to some when raw."

WARNING!

This is unbelievably ignorant for Lange, who damn well ought to have
known in 1963 (when the 1st edn was published) that they are
cumulatively DEADLY.

This was discovered during a famine in Poland during WWII when there was
a glut of them, and a dearth of anything to eat.

That it is still described as 'harmless' in the 1978 edition beggars
belief - I knew it was deadly in 1954... from Collins New Naturalist
Series, Mushrooms and Toadstools by Dr. John Ramsbottom, pub 1953, which
I borrowed from the local library, and completely filled the paper
stickything inside the cover with renewals, then chose the book when I
won a prize for GCEs at school a couple of years later.

So well used that it fell apart - I'm now on my second copy...

And have a shelf of mushroomy books.

I'm not doubting Rusty 'Fungus' Hinge's word, but thought you might want to
know.

This is a standard CYA caution: I've never had any ill-effects from
eating mature caps. The elderly ones really don't look appetising.

The rule of thumb is, don't eat any edible fungus if it has maggots in
it - not because of the wriggling protein, but the bacteria which
sometimes accompany them.

Generally, age alone in a very few species is only likely to lead to
indigestion.

--
Rusty
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