I’ve mentioned my wife’s garden and orchard before – about the gac leaves I have for breakfast, and the time she almost burned down our neighbor’s trees. Living next to these flora and fauna is quite a change for a city boy like me! There are five species of lizard we see regularly, many different kinds of bird (including herons, crows, owls, hummingbirds, doves, and various songbirds), many kinds of fruits and flowers, etc.
But we also have termite mushrooms! I posted about these in another thread:
The mushroom is mostly found in hills “owned by the King.” Gathering food from government land is prohibited, but police look the other way when locals ascend the hills for mushrooms – they’d quickly spoil if uncollected. But my wife can get the mushrooms in her own orchard. We had a heat spell last week; unfortunately my wife is so distracted by the needs of me and children, she forgot that that was the tell-tale sign. But she went into the orchard to gather bamboo sprouts and came back screaming!
I could tell from her voice that they were screams of delight, rather than fear or horror. Cone mushrooms had sprouted!
We have an area on our property where most years Amanita mushrooms come up. They are beautiful to look at, but too dangerous (for me) to consider trying. I like Psilocybins just fine, but would never eat an Amanita.
This year I picked some Amanitas and brought them to our local Mushroom Club meeting. Most everyone was thrilled to see a fairly rare (for our area) species, but one guy left in a huff, since technically possession is a crime.
As we were leaving, a guy approached me (a senior member who is a “trusted identifier”*) and asked if he could have them. I gave them to him with the understanding they were for his academic interest.
*In our club (and others) a trusted identifier is a mycologist who can look at a mushroom, tell you it is safe to consume/not safe to consume/indeterminate.
It’s been really hot here in Texas, now its turned rainy, do we have a chance of mushrooms too. And do you know what the white ones are? etable or not?
if you are not 100% certain of a mushrooms identification, DO NOT EAT IT. Identification involves doing a spore print, noting all the specifics of various structures, noting where it grew, and knowing whether there or not any possible toxic look-a-likes exist. After doing all that, getting a second opinion is ideal.
If you ever do eat a shroom you are not sure of, leave a small piece in a bag to help doctors identify why you are sick/dying.
I’ve harvested and eaten six or so different species from the wild this year (NO morels, dammit) but I was absolutely sure of the ID in each case.
Concur - I’ve argued this in the past - there seems to be a common misconception that 100% certainty is somehow unattainable for fungi - but of course it is.
Yes, in the sense that this will give them a useful fact to write on the death certificate. As far as I understand it, treatment for serious fungi poisoning basically consists of “Keep the patient hydrated, then wait and see if they survive” - there are not many actual treatments or remedies. Better just to say don’t eat it unless you are 100% certain.
I’ve done poorly this year - we had a really wet spring and summer, and autumn has gone suddenly cold - I’ve hardly found anything worthwhile.
I should have titled this thread
“Ask the techno-nerd from the city who ended up in rural Thailand, 70 miles from Nowhere City.”
Although late October, we still get some hot days, and the cone mushrooms are still sprouting on our land. This restricts my wife’s movements, as they must be cleaned within a day of picking or their taste suffers.
Sorry for the misidentification. I’m usually careful, typing in the Thai name my wife tells me, Googling to find Latin name, etc. In the case of that bird, I think my wife herself just called it “hummingbird” in English.
Other fauna on our small plot of land include squirrels, mongooses (mongeese?), etc. We have fish in our swimming holes – we don’t stock them but they arrive in flooding season. We have several Red-whiskered Bulbuls who have taken up residence recently; this excites my wife though Wikipedia suggests the bird is quite common. We have too many varieties of invertebrate to mention.
And flora. We have far too many fruit to eat ourselves, and my wife insists they can’t even be given away – everyone is faced with the same glut. My wife’s garden includes innumerable different herbs. Today our dinner was prepared with tasty wild betel. It’s in the pepper genus but not spicy hot like yesterday’s herb, clove basil.
We also grow rice so would be almost self-sufficient for food, except I insist on eating meat, milk and chocolate. Our dogs try to contribute now-and-then by stealing chickens from the neighbors. (One neighbor has lost at least one expensive fighting cock to our dogs; the fact I once rushed his wife to emergency room may be the quid pro quokeeping that from becoming a police matter.)
if you are not 100% certain of a mushrooms identification, DO NOT EAT IT. Identification involves doing a spore print, noting all the specifics of various structures, noting where it grew, and knowing whether there or not any possible toxic look-a-likes exist. After doing all that, getting a second opinion is ideal.