Mushroom foraging

I found these the other day and snapped a pic out of interest. I don't forage mushrooms, too scared and just assume every fungus is deadly. A quick Google though suggests they may actually have been edible and very tasty, assuming there isn't a deadly look-alike of course.

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Shaggy inkcaps on the turn.

Loads of shaggy ink-caps, and a few other types at the stables today

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Highlights of a Fungi walk in the peaks this afternoon.

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There's more I'll share later, saw loads of these little'uns...

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Haha, my son spotted these on a fungus fb group he has recently joined! We’re they as tasty as they look?

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^ all pictured found on a 4 mile loop. Lots more passed by.

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I learned about the Brown Roll-Rim today. I don't know how any of you can pick and eat these things.

Ha! Yep there's some good fungi groups on FB.

Awesome finds @rhb keep the photos coming I love it.

Personally I'd only eat what I was 100% confident in IDing. This means I'd want to know if what I have picked has any nasty lookalikes. I'm no expert so I've eaten hardly anything up until now.

I ate some wood ears last year, they are very easy to identify and delicious if dried/rehydrated in booze and dipped in chocolate.

The ceps I'm sure of so I've dried them and will eat them. There's no nasty look alikes for the ceps I've picked based on the cap/stem/habitat features.

I have a few books I used to check them and a few website and I asked some groups, everyone agrees with my ID but to eat them it's only my ID I'd trust at the end of the day.

I'd love to go on a proper foraging course but I think I'd still only eat the really easy things to identify like chicken of the woods, Cauliflower fungus, ceps and hedgehog mushrooms.

Dinner plate size but not sure if edible?

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You'd need to be sure before you ate them. See what you think compared here: https://www.wildfooduk.com/mushroom-guide/parasol/

The snake skin pattern on the stem is a key identifier and also if the skirt on the stem is easily moved up and down.

Ah, thank you.

This is the same outlook that me and my partner have, we did a course by that wildfooduk, and he was great. The mushrooms that we are 100% confident that we can id are so tasty that I've no desire to risk confusion.

Exactly! I can't enjoy my dinner if I am worried it's going to send me in to multiple organ failure.. Haha.

Amongst some crazy variety of mushroom species we found some pretty incredible slime mould up in Epping over the weekend. Tubifera ferruginosa

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To add to the edibility discussion, I think there's a huge degree of unwarranted paranoia surrounding mushrooms and fungi in general. Whilst it's better to err on the side of caution, there's only a couple mushrooms in this country that are legitimately toxic.

On the flip side a lot of mushrooms can be properly identified with a little nibble and there are so many species with incredibly distinct taste when raw, allowing an ID without the need for reagent tasting (as is the case with a ton of Russula species). The majority of inedible mushrooms just taste like shit or are likely to give some gastric distress, which is also the case for some known edibles. Plenty of people are known to have adverse reactions to wild mushrooms which are seen as choice edibles.

There's a really interesting passage in one of Paul Stamets' books where he discusses this topic and his excitement at every species with 'edibility: unknown' in ID books. His view was that someone's gotta find these answers and new choice edible or psychoactive species could be found along the way.

after you...

there's only a couple mushrooms in this country that are legitimately toxic.

Is this really true?

Woodland trust for example list 7 deadly mushrooms in the UK (and it doesn't claim to be an exhaustive list)

https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/blog/2018/11/poisonous-mushrooms/

Yeah there are very few mushrooms with the ability to kill a healthy individual, pretty much only amanita phalloides and virosa with any certainty and some of the Galerina species, but those are pretty rare in the UK. Plenty that'll do some serious damage but won't kill you and absolutely loads that'll cause some gastric distress/other mild symptoms.

Interesting that the woodland trust lists those 7 as pantherina's aren't toxic but instead are a highly potent psychoactive species. Again, it's this kind of thing which further confuses the situation as there are plenty of psychoactive species are listed as poisonous thanks to old school ways of perceiving things/assuming that having your world distorted is a case of poisoning.

Well, 'theres plenty that'll do serious damage' is quite different from 'there's only a couple mushrooms that are legitimately toxic'.

According to a quick Google the pantherinas are poisonous unless dried:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/amanita-pantherina

And getting massively fucked up when you weren't expecting it would clearly not be fun either

I would love to eat more wild mushrooms and if it was true that only a couple of species were toxic, I would... I don't think it is though?

there are plenty of psychoactive species are listed as poisonous thanks to old school ways of perceiving things/assuming that having your world distorted is a case of poisoning.

Yes I've noticed this in many mushroom guide books.
You right about how different people construe poisoning.
Not helpful really

Legitimately toxic meant in the context of likely to be fatal, of which there only a handful of species. And Pantherina's can be eaten fresh, the same as muscaria, but better psychoactive effects with reduction of side effects does come from drying/processing in some way/brewing into a tea etc.

And I'm not meaning to encourage rogue eating of whatever wild mushrooms can be found in the slightest, I just disagree with the general level of phobia often associated with mushrooms and the initial assumption that it's a wild mushroom, so it'll probably kill you. The vast majority of 'inedible' species either taste like shit, have a horrible texture, or will make you feel rough - you have to seriously fuck up to be at any real risk of dying or being hospitalised from wild mushrooms.

The biggest risk these days - in London at least - comes from enforcement of the prohibitive laws preventing foraging, hence why far more news articles cover prosecution of foragers rather than fatal mushroom incidents (at least as far as I've seen).