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‘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.’
Hmm - I’m not convinced about that as I’m sure that Amanita phalloides fried up with some garlic and parsley would be delicious. I wouldn’t rely on taste as a diagnostic for toxicity. The Roman Emperor Claudius apparently enjoyed what was to be his final meal. More recently Nicholas Evans ended up on dialysis after misidentifying Cortinarius as edible. Professional mycologists I know suggest the only way to be sure is spore prints and microscope but that’s going a bit far for most folks. I used to pick multiple baskets with ceps at a National Nature Reserve many years ago but it was a lot quieter than it is now and not only was nobody else interested I was regularly warned that I would almost certainly die. R. Gordon Wasson (the ‘rediscoverer’of psilocybin) suggested that there was a distinction between mycophile cultures such as the Slavic ones and the Anglo- Saxon mycophobic ones. I’m not convinced but it’s an entertaining suggestion .
Big_Nick-
Reports of folks who’ve eaten death caps and survived have it down as a genuinely tasty mushroom.
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Hmm - I’m not convinced about that as I’m sure that Amanita phalloides fried up with some garlic and parsley would be delicious. I wouldn’t rely on taste as a diagnostic for toxicity
Yes this obviously goes into the 'you've seriously fucked up category'. I'm not at all suggesting taste as a diagnostic for toxicity, but there are so many cases where taste is a diagnostic for ID such a number of Russula species which require reagent and microscopy testing for a firm ID otherwise. A tiny nibble of pretty much any mushroom in existence is not gonna do any harm with the obvious exception of phalloides/virosa yet can often be hugely beneficial in ascertaining an exact ID.
Gordon Wasson's argument for mycophile/mycophobe cultures I think has a lot of validity, the attitudes in the UK being a huge part of it, there is such a general culture of fear which I think is so often unjustified.
I think a really nice parallel is berry foraging- yes you could accidentally eat some nightshade thinking they're blueberries, but to call someone out every time they go blackberrying with the 'you're going to kill yourself' idea is obviously hyper paranoid and not constructive at all.
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R. Gordon Wasson (the ‘rediscoverer’of psilocybin) suggested that there was a distinction between mycophile cultures such as the Slavic ones and the Anglo- Saxon mycophobic ones.
My bro in law from the Balkans encspsulates this positive attitude to foraging with a healthy dose of Slavic cynical humour:
All mushrooms are edible
But some only once
Tonts
spicknspangled
Skülly
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).