Mushroom foraging

It's all about the books! Roger Phillips' Mushrooms. Geoffrey Kibby's are supposed to be good too.

Helps having an eye for details and differences, and more so going foraging with someone that already knows their stuff. Edible boletes are one of the safer groups though

Yeah for sure, we’ve since picked up the Roger Phillips, and a couple others. Although the Roger Phillips is rather intimidating - lots of similar looking things, some innocuous, some definitely poisonous. Makes me want to be very confident if I decide to eat any of them.
Need to find a foraging sensei to show me the way.

Yeah, there are just so many goddamn mushrooms. A lot of "useful" acquired knowledge is just recognising genus to know where to start, knowing what's worth bothering trying to identify, and common misidentifications.

With things like parasols, oysters, and boletes, the dangerous species have fairly distinct characteristics, and if you're only 99% sure the alternatives are edible anyway. Agaricus we prefer to be completely certain. With amanitas we just don't bother, as while there are good edible species the consequences of misidentifying are a bit extreme...

I will say it's very useful to image search for more reference pics, and if you think it's species x always Google to see if there are common impersonators

Lofty Wiseman's SAS Survival Handbook has some good info, it is a great book if you are into the outdoors and has loads of information for living off of the land. Hardcopy is great but a pdf version is available here:

http://www.landsurvival.com/downloads/SAS%20Survival%20Handbook.pdf

Any mushroom experts near SE24 that will show me their ways in exchange for beer or bike servicing? We keep finding fungi in local parks, and the books are helpful but not quite enough for ease of mind...

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Roger Phillips is rather intimidating

I bought a "field guide" type book with the more common types to help narrow it down for that reason. That RP book is good but finding something when you don't know where to start is a bit of a mission.

Went out foraging earlier, got loads to try to identify. Some are shaggy parasols which both of my books say may cause gastric upset in some people. Pretty cool looking and big, see photo.
Lots of other cool shrooms too, will post pics and possible identification once I've had a chance to go through them all.

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No foraging of these for obvious reasons but some nice specimens on my afternoon walk.

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More.

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Cool, I've never actually seen a fly agaric.

I think this one is a cavalier, either melanoleuca grammopodia or melanoleuca polioleuca (common cavalier). But not 100% on either of those. Can't find anything else close though. Dark brown cap with white/light cream gills. Thoughts from the experts here welcomed!

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If you're London based and not too far away then Epping forest gets loads (no picking permitted).

Giant parasols in the goat enclosure of a kids farm today. So wanted to get in and get closer pics! Also other in a local park, huge, mini schnauzer for scale ☺️

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I've only ever seen broken/rotted bits before so this was a good day indeed!
There were lots in the wood of different types that I didn't take pictures of as well.

Found these yesterday afternoon- field mushroom or danger?

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Is the cap there actually staining yellow or is that the light?

Really got into mushroom foraging with my girlfriend this year. Some highlights were these giant birch boletes and chanterelles we found while cycling or walking in the highlands.

Also can’t believe how many magic mushrooms there are just kicking about in fields and along paths in Scotland.

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Put a piece in the microwave or pour boiling water over a piece, does it dye yellow and smell of ink? If so - yellow stainer, will make you sick.

Yellow stain. In the bin. Thank you and @TvH

Are these magic mushrooms? Little sceptical they are but someone has just harvested the lot. There was a good few hundred kicking about.

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Don’t think so. Magic mushrooms have a very distinct nipple on the top and tend to grow in grassy areas. At least the ones I’ve identified have.

That is I think Conical Brittlestem . Inedible so someone will be disappointed.

No way are they libs.

There was some interesting coverage here on Belgian tv (as foraging is getting more and more popular here). The tv guy picked 10 different kinds of mushrooms and identified them using an app. Afterwards he took the mushrooms to Ghent Uni and had them identified by one of our top specialists. 4 out of these 10 were identified as edible but were actually severely sick making to even lethal. Here in Belgium the number of people ending up in ER has gone up by 400% the last couple of years.