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.
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 knowledge is restricted to the PNW (Pacific North-West) however, so also read on regional variations.
https://northernbushcraft.com/mushrooms/britishcolumbia.php
Apparently there’s also AI generated guidebooks, which look completely legitimate but are actually random nonsense.
You want the one with the crazy looking guy in the tux with a trumpet
✨everything the rain promises and more✨ Or something like that
50-50 you find him at a ska show
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, slop or not.
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 …
The cover of that book is something else hahaha
Here in the PNW you can grow mushrooms on your car if you wanted. Its dark and soggy.
I had a whole wild mushroom farm going on my front lawn earlier this winter
I think I would rather just start growing my own instead.