Safety
Eight rules that work, and seven tests that do not.
The rules are boring and they are the entire job. The myths below are still repeated confidently in comment sections and by people who have foraged for decades, and every one of them is worthless.
The rules
01Identify to species, every time.
Not to genus, not to 'looks like a chanterelle'. Several deadly species sit inside genera that also contain good edibles.
02Lift the whole mushroom, never cut the stem.
The volva at the base is the defining feature of the deadliest genus, and it is often underground. Cutting leaves the evidence in the soil.
03Take a spore print when the identification depends on one.
It costs nothing but time and it decides the honey mushroom, the parasol and several others outright.
04Cut every specimen open, individually.
One Amanita button in a basket of puffballs is enough. Batch decisions kill people.
05Never eat a wild mushroom raw.
Several otherwise good edibles are toxic or indigestible raw, and cooking also handles some of the milder irritants.
06Eat a small amount the first time, and only one new species at a time.
Individual reactions vary, and if something does go wrong, everyone needs to know which mushroom caused it.
07Keep an uncooked specimen in the fridge.
If anyone becomes ill, that specimen is what lets a hospital identify the toxin. This is a genuine, standard piece of clinical advice.
08If in doubt, throw it out.
There is no meal worth a liver transplant, and there is always next season.
Things that are not true
Every folk test for poisonous mushrooms is worthless.
Not unreliable. Worthless. Each of these has a documented counter-example in the single most dangerous species there is.
Poisonous mushrooms tarnish a silver spoon.
Complete fiction with no chemical basis whatsoever. Amatoxins do nothing to silver.
If you can peel the cap, it is safe.
The cap of a death cap peels easily.
Animals eat it, so it is safe for people.
Squirrels, slugs and deer eat amanitas without harm. Their metabolism is not yours.
Poisonous mushrooms taste bad.
Survivors of death cap poisoning frequently describe it as delicious. Taste is not a warning system for a toxin that takes twelve hours to announce itself.
Cooking destroys mushroom toxins.
Amatoxins are heat-stable and survive any cooking, drying or freezing you can do in a kitchen.
It grew in my garden, so it is fine.
Death caps are associated with ornamental oaks and imported nursery stock, and turn up on suburban lawns.
An app identified it.
Image identification apps are wrong often enough that poison centres specifically warn against relying on them, and they are most confident precisely on the small brown mushrooms that matter most.
If somebody is ill
- Contact a poison centre immediately. Do not wait to see whether it passes.
- Note the time of the meal and the time the symptoms started. That interval is the single most useful thing you can tell a clinician, and it is what sorts a bad night from an emergency.
- Keep uncooked specimens and the cooked leftovers. Both help identify the toxin.
- Feeling better is not reassurance. Amatoxin poisoning includes a false recovery lasting a day or two, during which people have been discharged from hospital.