Stalking the wild death cap mushroom

As purveyor of plant identifications, the Phactor gets lots of requests and even urgent calls for help. Identifications require both knowledge and experience, and a good reference collection also helps a lot. Now we all make mistakes, but amateurs are going to make more mistakes than us pros. Making IDs gets harder the further away you are from your home base because you are less familiar with the flora. The Phactor would never offer his services to an emergency room in China, for example. Here's a story of a fatal mistake: a Chinese chef visiting Australia finds what he thinks are edible mushrooms and makes a delectable stir fry that kills both the chef and his assistant. Now this fellow was obviously not even a good amateur because major mushroom genera are quite widespread and much more similar around the world than seed plants, which suggests that mushroom genera are quite ancient. Death caps are in the genus Amanita, large handsome mushrooms with white spores, a persistent veil, and a cup at the base of the stipe, which isn't always this obvious. Any gatherer of wild mushrooms should know this, and that combination of traits should have warned them. A few years ago an emergency room asked me to identify some bits and pieces of mushrooms a fellow had collected and eaten, but then he felt flushed and had what felt like palpitations, so he got scared and headed for the hospital. The bits did not allow a certain ID by a long way, but they were not consistent with a death cap either. But it really didn't matter; if the mushrooms had been death caps the fellow would have been a walking deadman. The toxins can destroy your kidneys before you even feel ill. Fortunately this fellow recovered, but his enthusiasm for wild mushrooms was greatly reduced. Mycophobia can go too far too. A woman almost got physically ill after learning that the delicious mushrooms being served had been collected in my own yard (Carefully IDed.). But do be careful out there folks, some plants and some fungi don't give you a second chance. The image of Amanita phalloides (the destroying angel) is courtesy of Arvenzo and the Creative Commons.

With June rains come mushrooms

There was a time the Phactor was quite good at the identification of fleshy fungi, but alas, not enough practice of late. The near record rainfall of June has begun producing quite a diverse array of mushrooms. This morning several Boletus bicolor had appeared over night along with a very handsome Russula emetica (dull red cap, snow white gill, white flesh, very brittle). Several others are not known by sight. Had to practice my fungal ID skills for a vet who was worried that a dog might have been poisoned by mushrooms in his owner's yard. And you always must worry about IDs when something is on the line. In this case it was a pretty easy one, Coprinus atramentarius, an inky cap mushroom that is edible unless you're drinking something alcoholic at the same time, and then it produces some most unpleasant symptoms (sometimes this mushroom is called the Tippler's bane). You can also make ink from this mushroom as they dissolve themselves into a black inky goo. Coprinus is quite well known for popping up quickly after rains. Unfortunately this provided no assistance to the vet because the dog was a non-drinker, but you feel bad for not having an answer.

Like many people he regarded most wild mushrooms as poisonous, toadstools. Now what do toxic mushrooms have to do with amphibian furniture? While in grad school a grand old man of mycology told the Phactor that "toad" was really "tod" (German for death), and stool was being used as in "stool pigeon", a decoy, thus implying that non-edible mushrooms were "death-decoys". Some people are way more mycophobic than others. A few years back the Phactor scored quite a harvest of horse mushrooms (Agaricus arvensis), a close relative of the mushroom of commerce as it's picture shows, except these grow in your lawn and bruise yellow. Some guests were treated to a wonderful mushroom sauce, and when one woman asked where these delicious mushrooms came from, and yours truly gestured to the side lawn, and said, "From under than oak tree.", she almost became physically ill from the thought of being accidentally poisoned. Well, as they say, you know they were good mushrooms if you wake in the morning.