When foraging or excepting foraged food one can't be too careful

[Maverick]

Case(s) in point;

"More than a dozen people in Northern California recently became seriously ill from eating wild "death cap" mushrooms that they gathered themselves, according to a new report."

"The woman had gotten the mushrooms from a stranger she encountered"

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2017/06/06/death-cap-mushrooms-sicken-14-in-california.html

 

[Dani]

A good reminder of what can happen when foraging and you're not 100% of exactly what it us. There are a lot of look alikes out there so be careful! If you want to do something like this, I would recommend taking along a locally trained person with you. As you have pointed out in another thread, something maybe edible in certain parts but not in other parts of the world.

 

[lonewolf]

especially with mushrooms, I know in the UK whilst there might be dozens you can eat there are hundreds that will kill you.
the only one I will touch and I know is edible is one that grows to the size of a dinner plate and is found in fields and meadows.
i'm not a great mushroom eater anyway, I can take it or leave it.

 

[Brent S]

especially with mushrooms, I know in the UK whilst there might be dozens you can eat there are hundreds that will kill you.
the only one I will touch and I know is edible is one that grows to the size of a dinner plate and is found in fields and meadows.
i'm not a great mushroom eater anyway, I can take it or leave it.

I love them, but not enough to test my skills, or lack there of, as a forager.

 

[Brent S]

One thing I'm curious about. I have a large bag of activated charcoal for incidents like this or food poisoning. It works by being really porous and it absorbs the stuff you ingested, protecting you some. I'm wondering if it will hold it long enough for you to pass it, or would you still need to have your stomach pumped?

 

[lonewolf]

never heard of ingesting charcoal before.

 

[user 6493]

when it comes to mushrooms I can not tell them apart,,so I leave the wild ones alone,,,it's just not worth the risk

 

[Maverick]

One thing I'm curious about. I have a large bag of activated charcoal for incidents like this or food poisoning. It works by being really porous and it absorbs the stuff you ingested, protecting you some. I'm wondering if it will hold it long enough for you to pass it, or would you still need to have your stomach pumped?

Never heard of using charcoal for mushrooms, it works for many plants and berries though.

 

[Maverick]

never heard of ingesting charcoal before.

Charcoal good for absorbing poisons if taken in short order of ingesting poison, a lot of people have problems swallowing charcoal and in some cases causes premature vomiting. When we gone camping with little kids we saved some charcoal from the fire pit (charcoaled softwood) and powder it out. Though it's not fool proof and timing dependent.

 

[lonewolf]

just never heard of it before, not disputing your theory.

 

[Maverick]

just never heard of it before, not disputing your theory.

It's been used for years, here is a little more info on it just in case you want to add it to the prep list or just knowledge based.

http://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements/charcoal-activated-oral-route/description/drg-20070087

http://www.emedicinehealth.com/script/main/mobileart-emh.asp?articlekey=58704

 

[lonewolf]

presumably you cant just use any old charcoal from the fire then?

 

[Maverick]

No, fresh charcoal

 

[DrHenley]

If you start right away, charcoal can help. But with the death caps, by the time you start having symptoms it's usually too late for charcoal.

 

[Maverick]

Unfortunately to many people use books, pictures and internet regarding mushroom picking. Mushroom picking is an on-hands learning trait from a experienced picker for a very specific area, there is no substitute!

 

[Brent S]

With charcoal, yes any form is better than nothing, but activated charcoal is what you really need. It is usually superheated with steam and it causes it to swell and has millions of little crevices and pockets. These are what absorbe whatever it is that you don't want in your system. It won't take it all out of your system, but the idea is to take as much of whatever poison out of you quickly as you can. Emergency rooms use it routinely, but I believe stomach pumping afterwards is the norm too. As far as swallowing it, yuk, but I'm sure it's better than being dead.

 

[jontte]

charcoal is good for some stuff,worhtless for other,sadly,but I have it in my medic bag.
about those "rooms", here in my neck of woods I follow one rule my dad thought me,break a piece from the cap,if the liquid is clear toss it,if it's white you can eat it,
though some "rooms" taste better than others..

poison.org/articles/2015-mar/activated-charcoa

 

[Brent S]

charcoal is good for some stuff,worhtless for other,sadly,but I have it in my medic bag.
about those "rooms", here in my neck of woods I follow one rule my dad thought me,break a piece from the cap,if the liquid is clear toss it,if it's white you can eat it,
though some "rooms" taste better than others..

poison.org/articles/2015-mar/activated-charcoa

Then there's some 'rooms' that make the world seem strange. Watch out for those purple rings around the stem..... when I was a teenager I found a few of those growing in piles of cow dung.

 

[jontte]

aaah,magic "rooms"...

 

[WGregMiller]

Then there's some 'rooms' that make the world seem strange. Watch out for those purple rings around the stem..... when I was a teenager I found a few of those growing in piles of cow dung.

They were popular here when I was a kid. They made tea from them that was supposed to be pretty potent. I never tried it, mainly because it grew from cow piles....

 

[DrHenley]

I only pick the chanterelles.

 

[Brent S]

I only pick the chanterelles.

Those are beautiful for a mushroom.

 

[Brent S]

I've seen kits for growing edible mushrooms. At least I wouldn't poison myself that way.

 

[Brent S]

They were popular here when I was a kid. They made tea from them that was supposed to be pretty potent. I never tried it, mainly because it grew from cow piles....

Yeah, I'm lucky I survived my teen years! On the other hand, I used to drink tea with cow dung in it, now I just spread it around the vegetables I eat. I guess I'm never gonna learn.

 

[WGregMiller]

Yeah, I'm lucky I survived my teen years! On the other hand, I used to drink tea with cow dung in it, now I just spread it around the vegetables I eat. I guess I'm never gonna learn.

Lol! I think the reason for staying away from the magic mushrooms was that I shoveled plenty of manure when I was a kid. I kinda lost interest in being around it for recreation.

 

[DrHenley]

I've seen kits for growing edible mushrooms. At least I wouldn't poison myself that way.

Brent, I have done those a couple of times. While it was neat, and the mushrooms were tasty, I didn't really think it was worth the money and effort.

After this next bout of rain, wait a couple of days, and walk though some oak timber. You should see bunches of chanterelles. The only lookalike is the Jack O' Lantern, but if you read up on the difference, you can spot the difference easily. The main differences are that the Jack O'Lanterns are orange and grow in tight bunches at the base of trees, while the Chanterelles are yellow and grow in loose bunches on the forest floor. The color however can vary, with some orange Chanterelles and some yellow Jack O' Lanterns. There are differences in the gills too, but you have to look closely. Chanterelles don't have true gills, they are more like folds that are forked, with rounded edges, while the Jack O' Lanterns have true gills. But once you have seen them in the woods, they are easy to distinguish from a distance.

On the left, Chanterelles; on the right, Jack O' Lanterns

Chanterelles are a delicacy, as sought after as morels. I can't begin to describe the taste. They are very delicate, so the ones you buy in a market are usually dried. People dry them, grind them up into powder, and sell them as a spice.

The first time I had chanterelles was in the 1970s and a biologist went though our woods picking mushrooms and cooked up a big pot of them. They were absolutely fantastic eating. I didn't think to ask him what kind of mushrooms they were, and have wondered about that ever since.

Last year, my brother in law showed me how and when to pick the chanterelles, and after eating them I realized these were the mushrooms I had been wondering about all these decades.

 

[Kevin L]

As an ex-paramedic and passing good at identifying wild edible (and medicinal) plants, I have a lot to say about this.

In a survival situation, stay away from all wild mushrooms unless you've taken several accredited college courses.

Some mushrooms are perfectly edible in one environment, and deadly poisonous in another because of the different soil chemistry.

This may seem odd, but there are mushrooms that are poisonous to white people and perfectly fine for african-americans. If you consider tetracycline, for example, it increases sensitivity to sunlight. White people exposed to sunlight after eating a specific mushroom will become deathly ill when the sunlight activates the toxins...but black people (and, presumably, some people from India) will have no problems because the melanin in their skin will block enough sunlight to prevent this from happening.

For any poisoning, activated charcoal can be made by burning white bread and grinding up the black ash.

As was mentioned earlier, by the time symptoms of mushroom poisoning show...it's already too late.

The toxins act by (among other things) destroying the liver and kidneys. The deadliest mushrooms belong to the Amanita family...namely Amanita phalloides, amanita virosa, Amanita muscaria, and so on.

Incidentally, lethal mushrooms can serve a very important function: cut up an Amanita muscaria (reddish, with white scale spots, well-defined gills with a notch, a ring halfway up the stem, a volvular cup at the base of the stem, and usually found in pine woods) into pieces, mix it in a dish with milk and honey, and place it in your kitchen on top of the fridge.

All the flies in the house will die when they come to eat the milk...and get fatally poisoned by the mushroom juice.

One final note: many horribly deadly mushrooms actually taste quite good, and I believe that this may contribute to some poisonings. Some toxic species taste like potato or radish, while others taste like apricots. Some mushrooms are perfectly okay as long as you don't drink alcohol with them. With these mushrooms, a single drink of wine will have you wishing you were dead while you hug the bowl...vomiting your guts up until you turn your insides wrong side out.

And so on.

 

[Maverick]

As an ex-paramedic and passing good at identifying wild edible (and medicinal) plants, I have a lot to say about this.

In a survival situation, stay away from all wild mushrooms unless you've taken several accredited college courses.

Some mushrooms are perfectly edible in one environment, and deadly poisonous in another because of the different soil chemistry.

This may seem odd, but there are mushrooms that are poisonous to white people and perfectly fine for african-americans. If you consider tetracycline, for example, it increases sensitivity to sunlight. White people exposed to sunlight after eating a specific mushroom will become deathly ill when the sunlight activates the toxins...but black people (and, presumably, some people from India) will have no problems because the melanin in their skin will block enough sunlight to prevent this from happening.

For any poisoning, activated charcoal can be made by burning white bread and grinding up the black ash.

As was mentioned earlier, by the time symptoms of mushroom poisoning show...it's already too late.

The toxins act by (among other things) destroying the liver and kidneys. The deadliest mushrooms belong to the Amanita family...namely Amanita phalloides, amanita virosa, Amanita muscaria, and so on.

Incidentally, lethal mushrooms can serve a very important function: cut up an Amanita muscaria (reddish, with white scale spots, well-defined gills with a notch, a ring halfway up the stem, a volvular cup at the base of the stem, and usually found in pine woods) into pieces, mix it in a dish with milk and honey, and place it in your kitchen on top of the fridge.

All the flies in the house will die when they come to eat the milk...and get fatally poisoned by the mushroom juice.

One final note: many horribly deadly mushrooms actually taste quite good, and I believe that this may contribute to some poisonings. Some toxic species taste like potato or radish, while others taste like apricots. Some mushrooms are perfectly okay as long as you don't drink alcohol with them. With these mushrooms, a single drink of wine will have you wishing you were dead while you hug the bowl...vomiting your guts up until you turn your insides wrong side out.

And so on.

Good points! though collage courses is a little much but not a bad idea. I've been picking 45+ years but I been taught by some very very seasoned foragers from a young age and only pick what I can identify 100 percent in a very narrow scope of my area, I'm still learning. I don't feel comfortable enough going to any other state and picking mushrooms. Mushrooms is very hands on learning from a reputable forager not books and pictures.

 

[jontte]

we've got some rain here now and there should be soon,very soon the first one popping up and they taste good,as long as you do the properly and I talk about the brain mushroom.

 

[Psalm7]

There are 2 kinds of mushrooms that the old timers taught me to harvest here . Slang / local nams here are murtles (mushrooms that look like turtles at a distance ) and hen of the woods (grow under logs or stumps like a setting hen hideing a nest ) .
As far as magic shrooms . I will say I work very near the bonaroo rockfeast site at a very public place and Im glad that mess is over for this year .