wrote in message ...
In article ,
echinosum wrote:

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.

Right. But I would NOT advise someone with that level of lack of
knowledge to eat parasols, because Amanitas (especially pantherina)
can show some of the 'first-glance' characteristics to a much lesser
degree. You need only a fairly small amount of experience of seeing
both Lepiota and Amanita to get beyond that - but you do need that
amount (and the book knowledge, of course).

I quite agree that eating something that looks like a small field
mushroom is ruddy insane.


I now realise that identifying safe mushrooms from a book is not my forte
and buy them from the supermarket.