I found some wild mushrooms in my yard last night. They looked tasty, but I was hesitant to eat them. Any budding mycologists out there? What are the odds that random mushrooms found in Pennsylvania will:
[ul]
[li]kill me[/li][li]cause gastroenteritis[/li][li]cause delirium/hallucinations/etc[/li][li]be unappetizing[/li][/ul]
I am guessing someone will suggest I buy a field guide, and I plan to, but I am just curious what the odds of finding “bad shrooms” really are. Thanks!
Here is the kind that I picked (George Costanza’a head in background):
I wouldn’t recommend that you eat anything that doesn’t cause death. You can stilll get pretty f’ed up by eating the wrong mushroom.
One or two types in PA might kill, but what other kind of ailments are you willing to risk?
Here’s the North Eastern USA list of mushrooms w/pics and other info. Maybe a coma is more your style, or loss of vision, etc. Sometimes, mixing edible mushrooms with the wrong ingredients leads to problems.
There are adventurous wild mushroom tasters, there are old wild mushroom tasters, but there are no adventurous old wild mushroom tasters.
Seriously, tasting wild mushrooms when you have no idea (and pictures in a book are not reliable enough when your life is on the line) if they are poisonous is not a great career move.
If you are not certain what specific species your mushrooms are, you should not take the chance. Even folks who know how to identify mushrooms probably won’t be able to do so just from pictures. And even if anyone could identify your mushrooms from picture alone, they’d be fools to do so, because you went and ate something poisonous, they’d be liable.
I on the other hand recommend that people should only eat things that don’t cause death.
In any case I don’t know anything about mushrooms but I would only eat ones that have been identified by an expert. You can’t know if anybody here is really qualified, you can’t trust your life to a stranger in thhe Internet.
It was implied that a mushroom was ok if it didn’t kill you.
I was stressing that one cannot recommend that you eat anything as long as it doesn’t kill you. Because there is great harm that can be done, even if it doesn’t kill you.
I grew up in N.E. Ohio and my granny used to pick wild mushrooms all the time. I never ate any and neither did my mother (her daughter). On the other hand the old witch lived into her 80’s (Only the good die young.).
I can’t imagine anyone actually knowledgable about mushrooms telling you to eat them without physically seeing and holding them, and probably also seeing them growing in the ground. Unless they had an overwhelming desire to get sued for wrongful death.
I hate to hop on a pile on with a me-too post. But. I worked in a mycology lab. The professor insisted on never eating anything that hadn’t been properly identified. Proper identification meant, in many cases, destroying at least one specimen, so we were encouraged to pick up a lot of whatever it was that had caught our interest. Our prof was always encouraging us to try wild mushrooms (after proper IDing). We soon learned the difference between non-poisonous and palatable. Just because it won’t kill you, doesn’t mean you will enjoy it.
In order of most likely: 1.) Be unappetizing - most mushrooms don’t really taste that great.
2.) Cause gastroenteritis - many mushrooms ( even some ‘edible’ species for some people ) will cause tummy aches.
3-20.) NA
21.) Cause delirium/hallucinations - psychotropic mushrooms are way down the list in terms of how common they are. Odds are rather low you’d randomly get ahold of one, though in my area one rather potent ( but unappetizing looking ) critter isn’t that uncommon on second or third-year wood chips used in gardens.
22.) Kill you - Contrary to popular opinion the vast majority of mushrooms are non-fatal. Make you feel a little sick, common - kill you, rare. The comment that “poisonous mushrooms are very toxic” is, by and large, fairly true. But most mushrooms are not poisonous in any real sense.
That said some really nasty ones DO come up on lawns and every admonition you’ve gotten up to now is spot on. NEVER mess with a mushroom that hasn’t been reliably identified. The half-assed, semi-educated guess I’m about to give you should not in anyway be considered reliable.
As far as I know the best general guide is still Daniel Aurora’s Mushrooms Demystified, though it really is more Pacific coast oriented. However no truly definitive general field guide exists - the topic is too huge. It would be like a field guide to insects of North America. I have the best available keys as of ten years ago to most of the North American genera and they fill two massive binders ( and would require a good microscope and some minor chemistry ) and are quite incomplete.
But if you were asking me casually, my best GUESS ( assuming dark gills, but they are still not really identifiable from a photo ) is some species of Agaricus, the same genus as the species that includes your store-bought crimini, button and portabella mushrooms ( all the same specis - A. bisporus ). Which doesn’t mean it’s edible by any stretch, even if I’m right. Many Agaricus, including some of the most common on lawns, are in the inedible, gastrointestinal upset group. A very general rule of thumb for that genus is that if it has a yellow or yellowish stain when you score it with your fingernail ( at the base of the stipe is often best ) and has a phenolic odor, it is more likely to be inedible. If it stains reddish brown and smells of almonds/marzipan it is more likely to be edible.
(bolding mine) I’m not an expert nor can I tell you the odds of finding bad mushrooms. But I will offer this anecdote. I woman that I knew (not a friend of a friend - I knew this woman) in central PA (coal miner country) picked some mushrooms a few years back and died from consuming them. IIR, it was liver damage. It took a week. Do what you will with this anecdote, but my thought is, what is the ROI? Are store-bought mushrooms so expensive as to make this worth the risk?
I have no quarrel with the price stores charge for mushrooms, however the shrooms I found looked great and I was ignorant as to their likely edibility. Said ignorance has been fought. Tamerlane: I have been looking at pictures, and agree with your guess.
As an aside, I see a few dozen dogs every spring/summer with mild, self limiting, gastroenteritis after they ingest mushrooms from the owner’s yard. :smack:
