California officials are warning foragers after an outbreak of poisoning linked to wild mushrooms that has killed one adult and caused severe liver damage in several patients, including children.
The state poison control system has identified 21 cases of amatoxin poisoning, likely caused by death cap mushrooms, the health department said Friday. The toxic wild mushrooms are often mistaken for edible ones because of their appearance and taste.
“Death cap mushrooms contain potentially deadly toxins that can lead to liver failure,” Erica Pan, director of the California Department of Public Health, said in a statement. “Because the death cap can easily be mistaken for edible safe mushrooms, we advise the public not to forage for wild mushrooms at all during this high-risk season.”
This is, in most cases, bullshit. There are some mushrooms that resemble something else, but many species are so far away from anything else in terms of how they look, that you know from afar: “this is okay”, or “this is inedible/deadly”
I’m pretty ignorant here but my time on iNaturalist disagrees. I also think that if you’re going to bias people one way or another then biasing them to know the look a-likes is important, and promoting being cavalier is a bit reckless
Firstly, please don’t drag me into “bias people” conversation, my comment was about mushrooms, not people. Secondly, I stated that some types of mushrooms have no lookalike, so you can make a safe choice of collecting only them. So, as deadly Deathcaps and some edible mushrooms (Cortinarius caperatus, we call them “chickens”) look alike, it’s better not to try collecting “chickens” at all.
This whole part is very confusing, and I think you a misreading “you’re going to bias”. Like priming. Say “look at the quality of this” to certain people and they’re far more likely to say it’s beautiful even if they know nothing about it. In this case, being ignorant but trusting can be harmful. Agreed there are some that have no lookalikes. I think we disagree about how much you can trust different sources and how important it is to make that point vs keep beginners overly cautious