California has had problems with SE Asian immigrants who mistake a poisonous North American mushroom for one that is edible and found in Asia. Apparently the similarities are quite striking and even experts can have trouble distinguishing the two without careful examination.
Typically, it takes a liver transplant to survive this sort of poisoning long term, although there are rare exceptions.
People did (and presumably still do) - that species has it’s reputation mainly from being so distinctive rather than being particularly dangerous.
Oh FFS. :smack: I lived in Devon when I was a kid. Not only do they have libraries where you can get mushroom books for free, they have mad old codgers who have spent their entire retirement memorising the details of every fungi (and recipe using them) in the county and who are desperate for a receptive audience to babble at. Relatives - random annoying people you’d never associate with if the weren’t related to you.
Sure they did - Siberian shamans and the like; but it was (and is) still risky business. The “risk” isn’t death per se, but of potentially experiencing a wide range of very unpleasant symptoms:
Plenty of more - pleasing - mushroom species to ingest, without risking nausea, salivation, twitching, seizures, comas, 10 hour headaches and the like. 
I Blame the Mario Brothers.
Was the chick who died cute?
Then it was Deathcap for Cutie.
And that boys and girls is why I don’t eat any mushrooms at all ever. If someone did that to me by grinding up the mushrooms and then saying: la de da, you just ate ground up wild mushrooms, the police would find a chef’s knife stuck in their throat. I think the jury would acquit. If I survived.
This is the sound…this is the sound of my stomach settling.
I’ll second Broomstick on hearing these news reports, but I can’t vouch for the SE Asian, just some visiting granny from the old country shoving mushrooms down the grandkids’ throats over Mom’s protestations. Talk about mother in law problems. Eating wild mushrooms anyone else picks is just stupid. Eating wild mushrooms without having read and understood local books with detailed descriptions, pictures and illustrations, even if you did pick them, is stupid.
Of course, please bear in mind that I am biased and have a deep pathological fear of mushrooms and don’t eat them. The only single time I ever did was when I wasn’t sure what the topping was and asked later after eating. My suspicion of what they were as I was eating them made me sweaty and pale. A chef friend sent out a complimentary dish at a fancy restaurant. I didn’t care for the mushrooms, but loved the scallops they were on. I asked him later what they were and he said wild mushrooms. Gaaaaaa!!! At least I didn’t stick his knife in his throat.
I love mushrooms (although I didn’t as a kid) but with more and more commercially grown varieties available I just don’t see eating wild ones as a justifiable risk. I know I don’t have the knowledge base to do so safely.
Well… I think murder is a little excessive but I was upset. Turns out she is as paranoid about wild mushrooms as I am but has a friend who has been picking wild mushrooms their whole life and is quite knoweledgeable of the local varieties. After I learned this I calmed down.
Thing is, there are poisonous and non-poisonous varieties of berry, leaf, tuber etc. Why do mushrooms get all the fear?
Mushrooms do tend to be a higher on the toxic scales. Most stuff, even if you ate a load of poisonous tubers or berries, would be really bad but not fatal with decent medical attention. Mushrooms are frequently more “inevitable” than that. Plus, you have to go to a lot less trouble than with tubers or leaves, which are not right on most people’s diets.
I’m not so sure about that. Certainly there are a few horribly poisonous fungi, but I think there are a fair few examples of the other things that will kill you good and dead after a fairly small dose.
I go out foraging quite frequently and pick all sorts of stuff - but only when I’m picking mushrooms do I get people tutting and telling me to be careful, because it’s so dangerous. I guess maybe people just haven’t heard about all the other opportunities for misadventure.
Mangetout’s comments have reminded me of the excellent Dorothy L. Sayers novel, The Documents in the Case, in which wild mushroom picking plays an important role. Well worth the read. (Note: it’s Sayers’ only non-Wimsey novel, so don’t pick it up expecting to see Lord Peter.)
In the case of Monkshood (aka Aconite) you don’t even have to swallow it, the toxin is readily absorbed through the skin the sap is one easy way to get it - and this is a fairly common household plant - the tubers can be mistaken for Horse Radish.
There’s a whole range of such plants, from Hemlock through to Yew
I would guarantee that almost everyone on the Dope has toxic plants in their house and/or garden - they’re very common. Almost no one ever gets poisoned by them (and most aren’t toxic enough to kill you). Maybe the mushrooms get all the press because people go out of their way to pick and eat them, which you don’t really do so much with your azaleas or irises.
Yeah, I suppose it’s because mushrooms are a prime ingredient - prized on a level to rival meat. They’re a big deal.
I think one of the reasons is that with berries, leaves, and tubers, the poisoning is upfront and obvious - symptoms within an hour or two. So, connecting your illness back to what you just ate is pretty easy. Treatment at that point is induced vomiting or something to clear out your GI tract from the other end so the poison can’t be absorbed. Once you’re over it, you’re good to go.
With the mushrooms they’re talking about, the symptoms don’t show up until 24 hours after ingestion. By then, digestion has taken place. It’s over. The stuff’s in your system, and the only thing the doctors can do is give supportive treatment. If you survive, you’ve probably got permanent liver damage and may even need a liver transplant.
No, not even death. The Stupid jumps ship and finds another host.
I’d certainly hope you’d pay attention if they’re shouting there’s smoke!
About 20 years ago, I roomed with a dude who was a certified expert on mushrooms. He did volunteer work at the local hospital to examine mushrooms that mushroom hunters brought in so they wouldn’t eat anything poisonous. Whenever he cooked stuff at home with mushrooms, he’d tell the other roomie and me that not only were they wild, but he picked them personally. I always felt safe when he said that.