Funghi in the forest

[Cugel]

Looking out for and collecting fungi is one of my favorite things to do on weekend potter on the bikes. Few things beat a big fry up of fresh mushrooms for lunch after a ride!
stgeorges.jpgblewit.jpg
For anyone interested in learning what`s safe to eat, I can recommend John Wright`s River Cottage handbook on the subject. It`s a good beginners book and will steer you in the right direction.

Once upon a time I had a book about fungi identification that, of course, listed those to avoid because likely to make you sick or kill you stone dead. I recall that it mentioned St George's mushroom with the comment that this was the worst of the lot because it took 60 days for it's toxins to murder you!

Now, the question did occur: how was this 60 day delayed death detected? Perhaps the eater merely died of summick else co-incidentally? As with many such subjects, the literature is full of mere hackneyed opinions as well as well researched facts.

Still ..... Have you been eating these mushrooms for many years? Did you notice any stomach ache after 60 days?

Cugel

[Cugel]

We haven't been mushrooming for many years now: we got fed up bringing home 5 kilos of apparent beauties then cleaning & de-worming them for two hours and ending up with < 500 grammes. Got a few nice pics, though:


Lycoperdon perlatum: vesse-de-loup = wolf's fart in French, rather more poetic that the staid English puffball.


Coprinus comatus: coprin in French, shaggy ink-cap in English.

And again, plunging shot:

I can go to the ball, Mother, I just have to find my wig.

These are popping up merrily in the bit of our front jungle that I took the brush-cutter over last week.

Generic stump fungus, might be sulphur tuft but the colour isn't quite right:

This one was at the top of a col in the forest. Don't go there any more, the potholes are fierce (they grow teeth and bite tyres).

"Wolf's fart". I'll be using that nomenclature in future.

The multi-sprouting stuff on the tree stump might be honey fungus - a prolific fungus inclined sometimes to eat the live stuff as well as the dead. Of course, it comes in several varieties and guises.

https://www.rhs.org.uk/disease/honey-fungus

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Honey+fungus& ... &ia=images

Cugel

[willp01908]

Still ..... Have you been eating these mushrooms for many years? Did you notice any stomach ache after 60 days?

Cugel

Yes and sometimes in fairly large amounts! They do make me a bit "gassy", but all mushrooms do this to me. A necessary sacrifice, I feel...

They do have a toxic lookylikey in the Fool`s Funnel, but the smell and timing of the SGM, make it a fairly safe bet.

Will

[Audax67]

...Generic stump fungus, might be sulphur tuft but the colour isn't quite right:

This one was at the top of a col in the forest. Don't go there any more, the potholes are fierce (they grow teeth and bite tyres).

"Wolf's fart". I'll be using that nomenclature in future.

The multi-sprouting stuff on the tree stump might be honey fungus - a prolific fungus inclined sometimes to eat the live stuff as well as the dead. Of course, it comes in several varieties and guises.

https://www.rhs.org.uk/disease/honey-fungus

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Honey+fungus& ... &ia=images

Cugel

I think you're right. Back when we were doing a lot of this the name would have sprung to mind, but now...

Still ..... Have you been eating these mushrooms for many years? Did you notice any stomach ache after 60 days?

Cugel

Yes and sometimes in fairly large amounts! They do make me a bit "gassy", but all mushrooms do this to me. A necessary sacrifice, I feel...

They do have a toxic lookylikey in the Fool`s Funnel, but the smell and timing of the SGM, make it a fairly safe bet.

Will

IIRC there's a mushroom in Madagascar that will kill you ~60 days after eating it, in the manner of Amanita phalloides but verrrry slow: feel fine for a while then sweat, twitch, convulse, croak.

We used to pick a stout grey-white mushroom called the Clouded Clytocibe. This is a powerful laxative if you don't blanch it before cooking, but it's very good if you do and even better if you then bottle it and eat it a few months later. Now I dunno about you, but I find it very impolite to start picking a patch of mushrooms someone else has found without asking permission. Once upon a time near Stuttgart some local folk did just that to a bunch of Clytocibes we had found, first asking if they were edible, so I just said yes and didn't tell them the rest. I do hope they had fun.

[Jdsk]

...
Once upon a time I had a book about fungi identification that, of course, listed those to avoid because likely to make you sick or kill you stone dead. I recall that it mentioned St George's mushroom with the comment that this was the worst of the lot because it took 60 days for it's toxins to murder you!

Now, the question did occur: how was this 60 day delayed death detected? Perhaps the eater merely died of summick else co-incidentally? As with many such subjects, the literature is full of mere hackneyed opinions as well as well researched facts.
...

If you can add the source then I'll try and have a look.

There are some mushroom toxins that have a delayed effect eg orellanine:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mushroom_poisoning

But I'd want to check that it took 60 days from ingestion to any symptoms or signs rather than 60 days from ingestion to death. The latter would be in the right ballpark for many toxins causing irreversible damage to eg liver or kidney with medical treatment. And the earlier symptoms or signs would make the association easier to spot.

Jonathan

PS: St George's mushroom isn't usually described as containing toxins that are dangerous to humans.

[Cugel]

...
Once upon a time I had a book about fungi identification that, of course, listed those to avoid because likely to make you sick or kill you stone dead. I recall that it mentioned St George's mushroom with the comment that this was the worst of the lot because it took 60 days for it's toxins to murder you!

Now, the question did occur: how was this 60 day delayed death detected? Perhaps the eater merely died of summick else co-incidentally? As with many such subjects, the literature is full of mere hackneyed opinions as well as well researched facts.
...

If you can add the source then I'll try and have a look.

There are some mushroom toxins that have a delayed effect eg orellanine:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mushroom_poisoning

But I'd want to check that it took 60 days from ingestion to any symptoms or signs rather than 60 days from ingestion to death. The latter would be in the right ballpark for many toxins causing irreversible damage to eg liver or kidney with medical treatment. And the earlier symptoms or signs would make the association easier to spot.

Jonathan

PS: St George's mushroom isn't usually described as containing toxins that are dangerous to humans.

The book that I have a memory of as warning agin' St George's mushrooms went to the charity shop a long time ago. The only reason I recall it is that it seemed a remarkable thing that a fungus could getcha two whole months after ingesting it! One of those memories that stick.

But other funghi books I've retained (because of better illustrations, layout, info and the like) don't, as you say, warn about St George's mushroom so perhaps I have a false memory; or the book itself was one of those compiled by a non-expert from other sources, which book-types are notorious for getting their "facts" twisted, as you will know. I do recall that book being something of a "popular" sort - large format, lots of pics, just a bit of accompanying text.

I've never personally come across a St G mushroom (that I know of). I did once have a collection of over a hundred spore prints - but they too went the way of such stuff when we made a house move. They were taken about 40 years ago, well before the advent of digital cameras, which would be a godsend to funghi-spotters today as one could have a photo of the mushroom but also it's spore print and associated notes, all in one neat file. (Mind, one would have to manage the colour space of the monitor, software and camera very carefully).

Although there are many hobbies and interests currently pursued in the Cugel household, mushroom hunting and investigation is now just a casual thing of collecting photos of the fascinating things when out cycling or dog walking. Perhaps I should revive the more detailed approach.

Cugel

[Audax67]

There are some mushroom toxins that have a delayed effect eg orellanine:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mushroom_poisoning

Interesting page, that - thanks.

The Gyromitra toxin - monomethylhydrazine - is interesting. It's classified as deadly, yet G. esculenta used to be ranked among the edible mushrooms, as the name suggests, with the proviso that after eating it you should let 7 days elapse before eating it again. That in turn suggests that one shouldn't trust old mushroom books.

I'm also wondering if certain medicines might not interact dangerously with certain mushrooms. Coprine from Ink Caps used to be used to reform punish alcoholics. Now, back before I was diagnosed with T2 diabetes I loved durian. Some years after diagnosis I was put on metformin, and the next durian I ate gave me a good old crise de foie - sore liver, nausea, feeling of bloat - for two or three days. I later found that a variety of durian could be deadly if consumed with alcohol, and wondered if metformin might not place a similar load to alcohol on the liver.

We have lots of Ink Caps in the garden just now. I don't drink alcohol, but I'm damned if I'm going to eat any.

[simonineaston]

...am idly wondering whether the advent of image recognition software ie Google Lens etc. has had any effect on the stats.s... I recall the dread with which we faced trugs full of field mushrooms presented by our kindly neighbour in rural Brittany each autumn.

[pwa]

I was walking in the Savernake Forset recently and was interested to see a "No Foraging " sign, presumably prompted by the threat of people turning up to collect mushrooms, chestnuts, etc on a commercial basis. I could have filled a sack with the chestnuts I passed. Pity I don't like them. (My Irish ancestry forbids me to take much notice of "No Foraging" signs.)

[simonineaston]

I'm reading a really interesting, if slightly dry, book at the mo' called Plunder Of The Commons, all about how our use of common land for foraging etc. etc. has been slowly eroded over the centuries. Apparently, woodland and forest acted as a sort of social security whereby anybody could rely on the resources in woods and so on to, at least scrape a living.

screenshot of book info.

[Mike Sales]

I'm reading a really interesting, if slightly dry, book at the mo' called Plunder Of The Commons, all about how our use of common land for foraging etc. etc. has been slowly eroded over the centuries. Apparently, woodland and forest acted as a sort of social security whereby anybody could rely on the resources in woods and so on to, at least scrape a living.Screenshot 2022-10-11 at 11.23.54.png

This is one of the themes of The Book of Trespass. How ownership of the commons has been privatised, and a fence or wall built, beyond which you are a trespasser.

[Cugel]

More funghi photos, from a dog walk or two rather than a bike ride.

Feel free to attempt an identification.
Five more to follow.

Cugel

[Cugel]

And here they are.

One or three are well past their prime. A bit like some of us.

Cugel

[francovendee]

I'd love to pick some of the mushrooms growing at this time of year but don't because I fear identifying between edible ones and the poisonous is a dodgy task.
A friend has two beautifully illustrated books, photos and sketches but the photos in the two books look different. Neither he nor I feel we can risk it.

[Mick F]

Saw this, this morning whilst down our drive with the doggie having his morning constitutional.