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.”
I loved plant ID books as a kid, and even ate some of the safer ones.
I decided “Why not get into mushroom foraging?” And bought a book on them. Reading it cover to cover, I swiftly realized that far too many look almost identical when young, when old, when wet, have imitators, etc. it’s been decades and I still don’t fuck with mushrooms. My mother independently came to the same conclusion when she took an interest in mushrooms, lmfao.
There are just as many, if not more, poisonous plant species compared to mushrooms. And just like with plants, there are mushroom species that are extremely easily identifiable and other that closely resemble poisonous species.
My mom always said ‘‘you can’t eat mushrooms you find out side’’ and that’s been working out so far.
Yeah. If not for the blue bruising, I wouldn’t be able to tell at all. Of course if I were comparing them side by side, I could note the differences easily. But out in the woods, no idea.
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.
please don’t drag me into “bias people” conversation
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
There are old mushroom hunters. There are bold mushroom hunters. There are no old bold mushroom hunters.
Do they mean, that some people foraged death caps, died, so suddenly mushrooms became overall more dangerous? This is not how it works!
I’m guessing they mean they’re tired of dealing with mushroom poisoning cases. “High risk” according to the article means wet weather and more death caps for laypeople to find and eat.
death caps became established in the us and spreading, because it was being brought over from importing oak trees. and it will spread to similar oak species native to the us, and plus its a mycorhizzae on oaks, so its impossible to get rid of them.
Sounds like big mushroom using FUD tactics
Yeah. Cause little mushroom’s running/ ruining the country.
As my great aunt said, “there are old mushroom foragers and there are bold mushroom foragers.”
mistaken for edible mushrooms by appearance and taste
Well now I wanna know what they taste like…
They taste like the edible one, so just have one of those
