Quote:
Originally Posted by Christina Websell
I do like the idea that mushrooms that pop up in your garden are edible and
maybe some are. I was afraid to eat something that I thought was a perfect
specimen of a parasol mushroom under my trees and perhaps it was fine.
So I ate another different one that emerged - looked like a small field
mushroom, but kinda not the same but who knows if they change as they grow.
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You, like Mr Whisperer, were suffering from not understanding the level of your own ignorance.
Actually parasol is one of the safer ones as it is relatively hard to mistake a parasol for something else, provided you have seen a few parasols and someone who knows has confirmed it to you. They are quite distinctive once you have seen a few and know that is what they are. So it is the parasol you should have eaten with confidence, provided you had good reason to be confident, not the mushroom which is much easier to mistake for something else.
You said "looked like a small field mushroom" - there you are, with your word "small" you already had an indication it wasn't quite right. With fungi, especially mushrooms, you don't eat anything that has any indication it isn't quite right. Also, with mushrooms, it is essential to let them grow beyond baby form beacuse when they are baby ones you can't be sure they aren't something else, this is something you need to know about mushrooms. They also tend to be gregarious, so only one of them was also an indication of not quite right. Also field mushrooms tend to grow where livestock is kept, which is why they are called field mushrooms. Is there livestock in your garden? Probably not a field mushroom then, though not impossible, has been known. There are some mushrooms, though not field mushrooms, that are common on grass verges for example, though given what else lands on grass verges one is a little careful.
Yes there are some things that can grow in gardens that are edible, but there are rather more things that can grow in gardens that aren't. St Georges Mushrooms and some edible milk caps (most milk caps aren't) grow regularly in my garden, but in such small quantity I can't be bothered. I was bothered when some morels grew, as they are special, but that was a one-off associated with some bark mulch we put down. My parents' garden had some boletes, which no longer occur when they grassed that bit. It also had summer truffles for a few years. But most of what grew, russulas, amanitas, wax caps, etc, I wouldn't touch.