In article ,
Janet wrote:
In article ,
says...
That's a bizarre mistake, difficult to understand.
He'd "been told" wrong information, and although he had an ID book he
didn't double check for himself. Presumably he trusted the absent
informant.
Which pretty much sums up the danger of people asking here, for second
hand mushroom ID.
That is erroneous. Whenever I have seen such a post, most of the
information-providing responses have had more warnings about the
dangers than a positive id. In particular, it isn't possible to
identify most species (or even genera!) from a description given
by an amateur. Asking here is one of the safer things to do, but
the answer will usually be "Either learn how to identify edible
and lethal fungi properly, or don't eat any you pick."
Boletus in general are very safe if you
know what you're doing. (IFF).
That's just what he thought....
No, that's only a small part of what he thought. He also thought
that he knew what he was doing, and clearly didn't.
As several of us have pointed out, double-checking for pores (and
not eating any that aren't open enough to tell) is the key, and
that would have prevented this. There are some poisonous boleti,
but the death rate is infinitesimal (wikipedia claims one death,
in toto) and all of the riskiest species can be avoided by using
a simple, reliable rule.
I am VERY rusty on my fungi, and one of the very few that I would
happily pick and eat without asking someone else to double-check
or going though my books very carefully is B. edulis.
Regards,
Nick Maclaren.