Simple UK mushroom guide

[Sweep]

A couple of times camping recently I have had a generous supply of mushrooms around me.

Seemed a pity to waste them but of course i had reservations/worries.

Can anyone recommend a very simple guide to uk mushrooms that would reliably help avoid any poisonous types, or is the risk too great?

Basic advice on which types may have a passable taste might also be handy. I can imagine that some/many might just produce a tasteless mush.

I stress that the guide/small book should be simple - i don't want masses of detail on biology.

Please note i don't use a smartphone so online sources no good. Something offline for looking at on a tab would be OK though.

[Tigerbiten]

A quick google search brought up "Mushrooms (Collins Gem)" and "Food For Free (Collins Gem)".
Both on Amazon.
No idea what they are like.
But I may of had other books in that series (birds, trees & wild flowers spring to mind) +30 years ago.

[Sweep]

thanks tiger - primarily interested in books/sources folks have actual experience of.

though


that food for free book does look interesting and to have some good reviews - will check it out.

Suppose it might not be too detailed on the multiplicity of mushroom type?

though can see that with a bag of cous cous, a trangia, bit of oil, seasonings and that book you may well be sorted for a trip

[Audax67]

A couple of varieties are easy to identify, particularly the parasol, macrolepiota procera, which is excellent when sautéed in cream with pepper & salt. Goes well with a good steak. You can also eat little white golfball-style doodads, lycoperdon perlatum, when they're small and white, but not once they've discoloured (they'll be nasty dark green inside). IMHO, they taste like paint.

They're the easiest to start with.

You need to be aware of the Deathcap, amanita phalloides. Folk (deceased) have confused these with common field mushrooms, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agaricus_campestris. Oops. The nice thing about Deathcaps - for whodunnit writers, that is - is that they reportedly taste excellent but knock out production of certain enzymes in your liver. You have enough of these in reserve to keep you going for about six hours, after which you die in convulsions over a period of anything up to 24 hours. Most mushroom toxins work this way, in fact. There's one tropical variety, whose name I forget, that doesn't take effect for weeks.

Other species, such as the clouded clytocybe, aren't deadly but will give you ye goode olde-worlde shits if you don't blanch them before cooking.

All of them, edible or not, can become toxic if they're mouldy.

If you put pics on your phone and keep the URLs handy you should be OK.

BTW, knowledge of UK mushrooms applies throughout most of Europe, but not necessarily throughout the world. I once met someone who had eaten a mushroom she recognized from home when she was in Africa and was ill for a week.

[Sweep]

Many thanks for that audax.

Tricky indeed.

The death cap looks so innocuous while the first one you linked to,which you recommend, actually looks kinda dodgy/not nice.

[axel_knutt]

Folk (deceased) have confused these with common field mushrooms

That's the issue I have with foraging. I wouldn't use a book with pictures of edible mushrooms for fear that it doesn't include pictures of the poisonous ones that are easily confused with it.

[Audax67]

Normally a book will take pains to describe the poisonous ones clearly. Back in the 70s a UK publication, one of these monthly-installment things that added up to an encyclopaedia, issued a recall on their September issue: some wight had swapped over the captions on the edible and inedible ones.

Y'know, I have trouble with that terminology. They're all edible. Some of them, though, you can eat more than once.

[axel_knutt]

Speaking of foraging, the hedges round here get laden with some berries I wonder about. They're the colour of a blueberry, but the shape of a grape, (and about half the size). They're green inside.

"An experienced fellwalker can tell the difference between bilberries and sheep droppings from the taste".
Alfred Wainwright

[gaz]

Sloe?

[rotavator]

Roger Phillips wrote a big book that I have and which is good and has also published a small guidebook more recently:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mushrooms-Roge ... 3RY68R2PYN

[crazydave789]

Speaking of foraging, the hedges round here get laden with some berries I wonder about. They're the colour of a blueberry, but the shape of a grape, (and about half the size). They're green inside.

"An experienced fellwalker can tell the difference between bilberries and sheep droppings from the taste".
Alfred Wainwright

sloes, have a go at gin or vodka with them. proper sloe bushes are prickly but there are several varieties and dwarf damsons which still work.

[crazydave789]

the collins gem book is pretty good, the various survival manuals have small sections in on mushrooms.

often the local nature trusts do walk and talk events on fungi for free.

there are some simple enough rules to follow like nothing with a collar, white gills or waxy shiney appearance but that can leave some tasty treats out. when in doubt leave it out is the best rule to follow though.

there's maybe a dozen in the UK you can regularly find and eat but getting scarcer as the eastern europeans and professional foragers strip the woods bare. sometimes you can find them in the trees of older forests like keilder where the squirrels put them to dry.

you are also often time limited as some go manky real quick like the shaggy ink cap and giant puffball, others like beefsteak fungus or chicken in the woods keep on growing. the little browny bluey grey ones you find on playing fields and manure piles are the magic variety though it takes a fair few to have an effect.

what you can do is save pictures onto a phone and print them out or have a look at some of the bushcraft forums, I did write up a section for trueways but that's been shut down for a while now.

http://www.wildfooduk.com/articles/how- ... mushrooms/

is a start.

[Sweep]

Thanks for that link dave.

Clearly care is needed and i may even wimp out from the idea.

The death cap sounds like curtains/you'd think yourself lucky to get away with a liver transplant.

I do have long distant memories of an episode with the magic variety but they came from a friend of a friend, not picked by me.

[crazydave789]

Thanks for that link dave.

Clearly care is needed and i may even wimp out from the idea.

The death cap sounds like curtains/you'd think yourself lucky to get away with a liver transplant.

I do have long distant memories of an episode with the magic variety but they came from a friend of a friend, not picked by me.

work your way through it gently, it's not that hard. I haven't checked out you tube but there will probably be plenty on there. find say half a dozen easy ones then work out from there.

with any plants then knowing how to taste test isn't a bad idea

pick a leaf, scrunch it up and rub on the forearm - wait for a reaction, tuck a piece under your watch strap for a longer period.
if nothing then place a piece under your bottom lip and wait for a reaction.
if nothing then swallow and add nothing new to your diet.
if nothing over the next few hours eat a bit more.

this also applies to cooked plants as the nettle for example would fail yet is probably the most nutritious edible out there and is a good replacement for spinach, broccoli etc... cooking renders many poisons down to a simple protein in many plants and insects like wasps, dandelions should be a nono due to milky sap but is the only plant like that you are allowed to eat the roots are like tiny parsnips.

foraging can be a lot of fun, hunting out pignuts while cycling is fun and kids love them. some plants you don't realise are good to eat, second year burdock root, rosebay willowherb all parts of the bramble are edible but the thorns need removing. edible leaves and flowers are everywhere.

we don't really have the woodlands for mushroom hunting anymore but they are out there, on the continent in the autumn many town have a local expert who will check your basket for poisonous ones and give you some lessons. here they are trying to stop professional foragers stripping woods bare for restaurants and the eastern europeans who usually know what they are doing you might even find one prepared to go on a forage with you.

http://www.fungitobewith.org/the-london-fungus-group/

Bushcraft UK has a lot of keen foragers who can help you along your way and as mentioned the collins gem pocket guides, or the richard mabey books.

[mnichols]

Is the risk to reward ratio worth it?

Get it right - save 40p
Get it wrong - become ill, possibly very ill, small probability of death

I like the though of foraging and eating wild food, but not sure the risk, reward ratio is right for me