Submitted 3 days ago by mr_might44@lemmy.world to science_memes@mander.xyz
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Context: after eating a death cap (Amanita phalloides), you’d notice a few of the symptoms at first, but these usually resolve after a day or two. After this, you’ll enter a latent phase where you feel fine, but your liver and kidneys slowly start to fail. By the time you notice, it’s usually already too late.
So it’s like radiation poisoning, then?
It’s not just similar, it’s the same symptom - they both kill you through damaging your cells’ ability to create proteins, radiation through damage to the DNA itself, and amatoxins from deadly mushrooms through blocking of the cell’s ability to read DNA to create mRNA, which is necessary for protein synthesis.
How do you even treat that? Seems like a pretty permanently damaging toxin?
it destroys your liver if you dont treat it quickly.
Don’t forage for mushrooms unless you identify them in multiple ways, from multiple guidebooks, and ask locals what’s around, first.
There are quite a few types of mushrooms that don’t have any poisonous lookalikes, that is once you know what to look for.
Oyster mushrooms, golden (and winter) chanterelles, puffballs (IFF you slice them and make sure there’s no ‘mushroom’ outline within!!!), hedgehogs, boletes.
My daughter foraged some oyster mushrooms. I did a lot of research before letting her eat them, but came to the same conclusion — there’s nothing else you’d mistake for it. She fried them up in some oil. They were fine. I had some. Definitely could use a better recipe than “pour oil, make mushroom hot” but they were edible.
But pretty much everything else we’ve found has been in the class of, “might taste gross or it might taste gross and kill you.” Thanks, I hate it!
I wouldn’t trust books when it comes to hunting mushrooms.
Don’t go hunting mushrooms unless your family’s taken you hunting mushrooms since you were a kid (and even then only in regions you’re familiar with, and even then don’t pick any mushroom you’re not 110% certain of, and if you’re not an idiot), or accompanied by someone with that experience verifying every single mushroom you find before picking it up, and telling you why and how it’d’ve killed you or why it wouldn’t’ve tasted good.
Good advice, but respectfully there are some trustworthy books. So long as the reader actually follows all of the verification steps in those books.
And definitely not those fly-by-night, probably AI-generated ‘slop’ books online!.
My wife & I only moved out to the west coast in our 40s, and in the decade since, we (slowly! carefully!) learned how to recognize the safe species. Just don’t take any stupid risks – be absolutely sure of an ID before eating. Show what you’ve collected first, if it’s a new one, to someone local who knows and learn from their experience.
One good book is All That The Rain Promises …
Nothing wrong with picking a mushroom to ID at home or at an ID clinic run by your local mycology club. You should individually inspect each specimen as you’re cleaning them anyway so you can throw out any which might be going bad, chock full of bugs, or misidentified.
When in doubt, throw it out.
Here in the PNW you can grow mushrooms on your car if you wanted. Its dark and soggy.
I think I would rather just start growing my own instead.
If all mushrooms are edible but some are only edible once, m the latency makes the death cap one of the few mushrooms that’s edible a few times.
I had rabies, but after a few days I felt better.
Would you like a glass of water?
As much as I would want a death cap mushroom!
For those that missed it, I was referring to rabies and hydrophobia.
The rabies of mushrooms
I think you can survive death cap if you seek treatment even after symptoms show up within 12 hours, although chance of survival drops drastically afterwards.
In rabies symptoms means you’re done.
Unless you are with Stamets and he tries it first, you shouldn’t eat foraged mushrooms.
Generally speaking, the only safe wild mushroom is one you saw someone else eat a few days ago and they are still fine.
Not true at all, honestly kind of fear mongering. Mushrooms like morels are extremely hard to mistake unless you resist all forms of obvious Id.
Morrells are the one real exception because they are so easily distinguished from lookalikes.
If wish to learn how to forage for mushrooms, join a local mycology club and go out with them. They can identify mushrooms for you and teach you how to do so yourself. They can also recommend good local field guides, I see a few folks in this thread recommending All that the rain promises and More which is a reputable guide but it’s also spectacularly out of date and only applicable to Western North America.
It’s important to know what you’re doing but mushroom identification is not nearly as difficult as some of the comments here make it out to be. There are far fewer deadly mushrooms out there than most people think and it’s fairly easy to familiarize yourself with all the deadly species in your area so you can avoid them.
Every. Single. Time.
birdwing@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 days ago
Omae wa mou shindeiru
VibeSurgeon@piefed.social 2 days ago
NANI