If you’re going to San Francisco, be sure to watch out for deadly mushrooms.
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Attack of the death caps — 16 Comments
So remember, children, always break the stem and look for the blue bruising if you are collecting the magic variety.
Apparently people can get sick just from touching these things, not just eating them. This gives me a new view of the spring garden cleanup …
We have a variety of this mushroom here in Hawaii that came in with the Ironwood tree from Australia. A decade or so ago a party of people ate some they had gathered not half a mile from my home. I haven’t been able to find the original news article or a followup but I remember at the time being shocked to read that there were several people in critical condition with liver failure. And of course told my kids who liked to build forts in the ironwood forest not to touch anything like a mushroom!
I was always told not to eat any mushroom you find… store bought or no go.
Its weird people out there don’t follow this as a general rule.
Then again, I am in California and it sounds like we’ve had these things for a long time and it might a cause people knew that.
This time Alice waited patiently until it chose to speak again. In a minute or two the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth and yawned once or twice, and shook itself. Then it got down off the mushroom, and crawled away in the grass, merely remarking as it went, ‘One side will make you grow taller, and the other side will make you grow shorter.’
‘One side of what? The other side of what?’ thought Alice to herself.
‘Of the mushroom,’ said the Caterpillar, just as if she had asked it aloud; and in another moment it was out of sight.
Your headline made me think there had been a new kerfuffle about MAGA hats. A relief to find it was just sensible advice about the risks of gathering wild mushrooms!
John: Me too!
Although I do think we oughtn’t to let the persecution of the Covington kids drop out of public awareness. Drag the Usual Suspects through the mud at every available opportunity. Stress the commonality between the boys’ treatment and that of Kavanaugh. So forth.
Almost everybody in Russia (and Poland, too) collects and eats wild mushrooms. This is a national hobby. And for dirty poor peasants, an indispensable food source.
There are many kinds of poisonous mushrooms growing in Moscow forests and public parks. I know well about dozen of them, but the death caps are far more deadly than anything else.
Amanita Muscaria grows in the ny northeast area
i know my shrooms since childhood… rarely eat though anymore
great grandmother and others taught me… [Latvian…]
amanita’s are psuedo toxic… they had to be prepped right
one way, which i will share, required ownership of reindeer
🙂
They eat the mushrooms, you drink the urine…
Amanita muscaria, commonly known as the fly agaric or fly amanita, is a basidiomycete of the genus Amanita. It is also a muscimol mushroom. Native throughout the temperate and boreal regions of the Northern Hemisphere…
i have nice photos of both the red and yellow versions]
Professor Marija Gimbutien?, a renowned Lithuanian historian, reported to R. Gordon Wasson on the use of this mushroom in Lithuania. In remote areas of Lithuania Amanita muscaria has been consumed at wedding feasts, in which mushrooms were mixed with vodka. The professor also reported that the Lithuanians used to export A. muscaria to the Lapps in the Far North for use in shamanic rituals. The Lithuanian festivities are the only report that Wasson received of ingestion of fly agaric for religious use in Eastern Europe
North europeans like to go mushrooming…
and here is how my great grandmother used it…
Amanita muscaria is traditionally used for catching flies possibly due to its content of ibotenic acid and muscimol. Recently, an analysis of nine different methods for preparing A. muscaria for catching flies in Slovenia have shown that the release of ibotenic acid and muscimol did not depend on the solvent (milk or water) and that thermal and mechanical processing led to faster extraction of ibotenic acid and muscimol
now, sadly, the one that he pointed out is not all that deadly [except when young, as its color is not as common when adult in mushrooms people mistake – but below is a cousin that gets a good number].. oh, it is very deadly if you eat it – but its not number one… thats below…
MORE dangerous are the mushrooms that look like edible favs
like white angels. [Amanita ocreata Amanita bisporigera]
Also known as Destroying Angel
The name destroying angel applies to several similar, closely related species of deadly all-white mushrooms in the genus Amanita. They are Amanita bisporigera and A. ocreata in eastern and western North America, and A. virosa in Europe. Another very similar species, A. verna or fool’s mushroom, was first described in France
whats the problem? well when they are young, they look like puff ball
and puff ball can be eaten..
The destroying angel (Amanita bisporigera) and the death cap (Amanita phalloides) account for the overwhelming majority of deaths due to mushroom poisoning. The toxin responsible for this is amatoxin, which inhibits RNA polymerase II and III. Symptoms do not appear for 5 to 24 hours, when the toxins may already be absorbed and the damage (destruction of liver and kidney tissues) is irreversible.
As little as half a mushroom cap can be fatal if the victim is not treated quickly enough. The symptoms include vomiting, cramps, delirium, convulsions, and diarrhea.
personally when i am upstate, i am not so concerned about the mushrooms…
i DO tend to keep an eye out for black bear…
and like last years picnic, rattlesnake…
both pretty harmless too actually…
big difference between potential and practice
in most of the things on this post it requires a person to be somewhat a fool and ignorant as a essential ingredient…
When I was a child, I used to go with my father to a nursery owned by friends who grew mushrooms in the basement of the main building. They were in flats in the dark basement. They would snip off the fruit, leaving the mycelium to grow more fruit. I never asked what the flat contained as the base. No doubt manure. They didn’t have them in stores, as I remember.
Typing mostly right handed today.
Mike K:
I hope you regain full use of the left hand soon.
My mother was a great wild mushroom gatherer when we lived up north, me a teenager then. She made amazingly wonderful wild mushroom omelets. My MD father always told her, “You eat it first, and if you’re OK an hour later, I’ll try it”. He thought every one was an Amanita, regardless of appearance!
Southern mushrooms differ in species considerably from their Yankee cousins, and I have not found a guide to edible Southern mushrooms.
There’s pretty amazing mail-order tech available for home-growing mushrooms.
Obviously the real goal for many customers is to grow psilocybin mushrooms, but the tech can be adapted to gourmet mushrooms as well and is often sold on that basis.
Either way, I understand it’s a fascinating hobby. I was always struck when I went to sidewalk art shows, there was always some painter with a display of whimsical oils of mushrooms.
“The strip of grass between sidewalks and streets.”. What do you call that? I had a professor who asked the class, and we had at least four terms for it just from Ohio. I’ve heard “city strip”, “no-mans land”, “devil’s strip” and “tree lawn”.
When I lived in France, pharmacists took required training in mushroom identification. If you gathered in the woods, you could take your trove to the pharmacy and for free they would cull the dangerous ones. The problem around Paris was that a local mushroom known as the Champigon de Paris closely resembled the Amanite. That made the pharmacist mandatory.
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So remember, children, always break the stem and look for the blue bruising if you are collecting the magic variety.
Apparently people can get sick just from touching these things, not just eating them. This gives me a new view of the spring garden cleanup …
We have a variety of this mushroom here in Hawaii that came in with the Ironwood tree from Australia. A decade or so ago a party of people ate some they had gathered not half a mile from my home. I haven’t been able to find the original news article or a followup but I remember at the time being shocked to read that there were several people in critical condition with liver failure. And of course told my kids who liked to build forts in the ironwood forest not to touch anything like a mushroom!
I was always told not to eat any mushroom you find… store bought or no go.
Its weird people out there don’t follow this as a general rule.
Then again, I am in California and it sounds like we’ve had these things for a long time and it might a cause people knew that.
Your headline made me think there had been a new kerfuffle about MAGA hats. A relief to find it was just sensible advice about the risks of gathering wild mushrooms!
John: Me too!
Although I do think we oughtn’t to let the persecution of the Covington kids drop out of public awareness. Drag the Usual Suspects through the mud at every available opportunity. Stress the commonality between the boys’ treatment and that of Kavanaugh. So forth.
Almost everybody in Russia (and Poland, too) collects and eats wild mushrooms. This is a national hobby. And for dirty poor peasants, an indispensable food source.
There are many kinds of poisonous mushrooms growing in Moscow forests and public parks. I know well about dozen of them, but the death caps are far more deadly than anything else.
Amanita Muscaria grows in the ny northeast area
i know my shrooms since childhood… rarely eat though anymore
great grandmother and others taught me… [Latvian…]
amanita’s are psuedo toxic… they had to be prepped right
one way, which i will share, required ownership of reindeer
🙂
They eat the mushrooms, you drink the urine…
Amanita muscaria, commonly known as the fly agaric or fly amanita, is a basidiomycete of the genus Amanita. It is also a muscimol mushroom. Native throughout the temperate and boreal regions of the Northern Hemisphere…
i have nice photos of both the red and yellow versions]
North europeans like to go mushrooming…
and here is how my great grandmother used it…
now, sadly, the one that he pointed out is not all that deadly [except when young, as its color is not as common when adult in mushrooms people mistake – but below is a cousin that gets a good number].. oh, it is very deadly if you eat it – but its not number one… thats below…
MORE dangerous are the mushrooms that look like edible favs
like white angels. [Amanita ocreata Amanita bisporigera]
Also known as Destroying Angel
The name destroying angel applies to several similar, closely related species of deadly all-white mushrooms in the genus Amanita. They are Amanita bisporigera and A. ocreata in eastern and western North America, and A. virosa in Europe. Another very similar species, A. verna or fool’s mushroom, was first described in France
whats the problem? well when they are young, they look like puff ball
and puff ball can be eaten..
personally when i am upstate, i am not so concerned about the mushrooms…
i DO tend to keep an eye out for black bear…
and like last years picnic, rattlesnake…
both pretty harmless too actually…
big difference between potential and practice
in most of the things on this post it requires a person to be somewhat a fool and ignorant as a essential ingredient…
When I was a child, I used to go with my father to a nursery owned by friends who grew mushrooms in the basement of the main building. They were in flats in the dark basement. They would snip off the fruit, leaving the mycelium to grow more fruit. I never asked what the flat contained as the base. No doubt manure. They didn’t have them in stores, as I remember.
Typing mostly right handed today.
Mike K:
I hope you regain full use of the left hand soon.
My mother was a great wild mushroom gatherer when we lived up north, me a teenager then. She made amazingly wonderful wild mushroom omelets. My MD father always told her, “You eat it first, and if you’re OK an hour later, I’ll try it”. He thought every one was an Amanita, regardless of appearance!
Southern mushrooms differ in species considerably from their Yankee cousins, and I have not found a guide to edible Southern mushrooms.
There’s pretty amazing mail-order tech available for home-growing mushrooms.
Obviously the real goal for many customers is to grow psilocybin mushrooms, but the tech can be adapted to gourmet mushrooms as well and is often sold on that basis.
Either way, I understand it’s a fascinating hobby. I was always struck when I went to sidewalk art shows, there was always some painter with a display of whimsical oils of mushrooms.
“The strip of grass between sidewalks and streets.”. What do you call that? I had a professor who asked the class, and we had at least four terms for it just from Ohio. I’ve heard “city strip”, “no-mans land”, “devil’s strip” and “tree lawn”.
When I lived in France, pharmacists took required training in mushroom identification. If you gathered in the woods, you could take your trove to the pharmacy and for free they would cull the dangerous ones. The problem around Paris was that a local mushroom known as the Champigon de Paris closely resembled the Amanite. That made the pharmacist mandatory.