Mushroom Season Is Here!

[amemome]

got myself a nice serving of sauteed mushrooms! wonder what the next day will bring...

 

[pochy]

Toad is eternal, you can't escape from the wrath of Toad.

be careful toad or i'll ms paint you ( ◡̀_◡́)ᕤ

 

[azurill]

Currently at 58 spores looking for some more . Hope your are all having a great day.

 

[Dim]

Going to share this classic here for the Mushroom Season.
Toad is eternal, you can't escape from the wrath of Toad.

Here's a bigger classic:

 

[You got mail!]

Good morning mushroom pickers! Happy Sunday

 

[Yanrima~]

View attachment 587080
be careful toad or i'll ms paint you ( ◡̀_◡́)ᕤ

It's too late now, he's already in MS Paint and already in your walls. He's getting stronger as we speak.

 

[Cirice]

Oh glad to see we have another day of those confirmed safe mushrooms! I thought they were going to change last evening.
I'm sure the real mushroom collectibles will be priced quite high considering how we're dealing with those shrooms, so finger crossed everyone gets the most safe mushrooms in the future rounds!

 

[pancake2]

I haven't seen a post or thread anywhere about dusting. So anyone who sees this, feel free to message my profile to get those points. Or you know if just want to.

there’s a thread somewhere where someone figured out that it doesn’t look like profile posting contributes to the dusting this time. But once per day visiting someone’s profile does.

 

[-Blue-]

Here's a bigger classic:

And here's an even bigger classic.

 

[pancake2]

This is the mushroom story my family likes to tell. A few months after my sister was born and a couple of years before I was born, my mom’s grandmother, aunt, and parents came to visit. My dad’s parents were living in the house. My mom’s youngest brother lived an hour away from them at the time and her parents went to see him during the day. We have a bunch of pine trees growing in the middle of the backyard and underneath the trees, my great grandma saw these mushrooms growing and she told my dad’s parents how they were the most delicious mushrooms ever. She was in her 80s and clearly didn’t always make the best judgment at times due to age. My grandma didn’t believe her and said that the mushrooms weren’t suitable for consumption. But great grandma didn’t listen and picked the mushrooms anyway and proceeded to make a small pot of soup with them.

My dad came home from work and saw the soup cooking and great grandma had him taste a bit. He said it made his tongue feel numb and the spoon turned black and he got really concerned and told her that the mushrooms weren’t safe to eat and that the soup needed to be thrown out immediately. Great grandma didn’t listen and she hid the pot of soup underneath the sink. The next day my mom’s parents went to visit my uncle and my mom and her aunt were busy taking care of my sister and my dad went to work. While everyone else was busy, great grandma took out the soup from its hiding place and she ate it and had my dad’s parents eat it with her. Grandma said she was forced to do it because great grandma kept insisting and she only ate it to make her stop nagging her. Grandma immediately didn’t feel well and threw up and didn’t eat that much of the soup. Great grandma and my grandpa on the other hand ate the entire pot. Then all three laid Down for a nap.

An hour later, my mom noticed that all three weren’t waking up and saw the pot and bowls that they used to eat the soup. She then immediately panicked and told my dad that all three wouldn’t wake up and he rushed home. They called 911 for help and three ambulances were sent over to the house. The neighbor was coming home from work and saw the madness happening in front of her. My mom had to call her brother to tell their father that his mother was just rushed to the hospital. All three didn’t eat enough of the mushrooms to kill them luckily and had to stay a couple days in the hospital. My grandma was the least affected since she didn’t eat that much of the soup. My grandpa on the other hand, kept flirting with the nurses which irritated grandma. Great grandma actually became very violent. My dad went into her room to ask her how she was feeling and he said that she suddenly swung her arm in attempt to hit him. The staff then struggled to strap her down because she kept trying to attack anyone that came near her. This elderly woman actually made my dad shake in fear because of how violent she had become. My mom was lucky that her aunt had also come to visit and she watched my sister while both of my parents were in the hospital. All three senior citizens made full recoveries and were allowed to go home.

And that’s the mushroom story. My neighbor who saw the ambulance is a retired teacher and she told the story all the time to her students as part of a lesson of not eating wild mushrooms that you randomly find growing outside. My grandma continued to blame great grandma for this fiasco until the day she died. Because of this incident, we never trusted any mushrooms that didn’t come from the store.

Wow that sounds frightening! I am glad they all survived the ordeal at least. I wonder if hallucinations were part of what happened to them, I know sometimes those can make people violent because whatever they’re hallucinating about feels like they need to defend themselves against it.

 

[Captain Jigglypuff]

Omg, that's crazy. Very fortunate the outcome wasn't worse, but bad enough as it was.

I could never eat foraged mushrooms. Too afraid. We once had a neighbor (back in italy) who would come get mushrooms out of our yard. My mom thought he was nuts. He'd always offer her some and she'd always decline. Then later we'd get the lecture of never eat mushrooms "from the wild" because we'd croak.

The neighbor said she just came home from work and saw three ambulances sitting in our driveway to cart off three senior citizens. She was a close friend of my mom and was shocked to hear that her grandmother had cooked some soup made from some mushrooms she just randomly found growing outside. This was in the early 80s. Hearing this as a kid made me never want to eat any mushrooms that were bought from the store. The exception would probably be truffles but they are so hard to find and very expensive to buy.

 

[corlee1289]

Looking for some spores to collect

 

[pancake2]

I think the trick to mushroom foraging (in real life) is that people need to really know what they’re doing with identification, and always err on the side of caution. There are definitely people who pick wild mushrooms and are fine, but they have to really study what they’re doing beforehand. Anyone without knowledge on the subject definitely should not be doing it. Personally I would never do it, because I don’t have that knowledge. But those who genuinely know what they’re doing I believe should be fine.

 

[Captain Jigglypuff]

I think the trick to mushroom foraging (in real life) is that people need to really know what they’re doing with identification, and always err on the side of caution. There are definitely people who pick wild mushrooms and are fine, but they have to really study what they’re doing beforehand. Anyone without knowledge on the subject definitely should not be doing it. Personally I would never do it, because I don’t have that knowledge. But those who genuinely know what they’re doing I believe should be fine.

My guess as to why my great grandmother ended up poisoning herself and my grandparents is that over in Taiwan, there must be some sort of edible mushrooms that do grow underneath pine trees and so when she saw the mushrooms growing here in the US underneath some pine trees, she thought that they were the same kind.

 

[Nougat]

I'd say good luck to everyone for tonight, however with the info we have everyone should have 30 more Sautéed Mushrooms tomorrow

Here's hoping Morelull won't be poisonous in the next round!

 

[pancake2]

My guess as to why my great grandmother ended up poisoning herself and my grandparents is that over in Taiwan, there must be some sort of edible mushrooms that do grow underneath pine trees and so when she saw the mushrooms growing here in the US underneath some pine trees, she thought that they were the same kind.

Oh yes I definitely know that with foraging anything, your knowledge MUST be location specific. There are things that may be perfectly safe in one area of the world, that then look very much like something poisonous in another area. That could make a lot of sense for how someone could get confused, especially someone older who may not always have the clearest of thoughts.

 

[OswinOswald]

My guess as to why my great grandmother ended up poisoning herself and my grandparents is that over in Taiwan, there must be some sort of edible mushrooms that do grow underneath pine trees and so when she saw the mushrooms growing here in the US underneath some pine trees, she thought that they were the same kind.

Mushroom hunting is such a fascinating activity. Just like people who go birding etc, they have to know A LOT about mushroom lifecycles and how to identify not only the traits of edible mushrooms, but also how to distinguish from the poisonous ones! And I imagine throwing two continents into the mix makes things even more complicated. I remember when I visited my family in Taiwan a decade ago, all the birds and butterflies and trees were different! I imagine there would be different mushrooms too.

For birds, there is a cool app called Merlin, which is put out by a group at Cornell... It makes birding easy (I call it birding for dummies) and it uses the power of computers to help identify birds by recording their song, or by your photos, or you can make choices about their characteristics. I wonder if there's an app like that for mushrooming!

 

[-Blue-]

Just like any food, I am sure mushrooms were trial and error. We learned they were poisonous because some poor soul ate them and was poisoned or died. Tomatoes were actually thought to be poisonous in ancient times. Also they probably saw if animals ate them and then decided it was worth the risk.

Holly berries are poisonous, but not to birds. Some person probably saw the birds eating them and then tried it themself. And thus we learned they were poisonous.

 

[pancake2]

I wonder if there's an app like that for mushrooming!

So as a disclaimer I do not have knowledge myself on foraging, but on occasion I’ve watched videos from people who do cuz it is an interesting thing to watch people discuss even if I don’t have the expertise myself. And what I’ve gathered from things I’ve heard these people discuss is that if you’re going to be eating something, you do not want to blindly trust an app. It can be an interesting starting point, and if you’re just looking at plants and want to know what something is they can be interesting to help get you likely identifiers, but none of these things are accurate enough to trust them with your health. Similarly animal identifying apps are also not perfect, but given that there isn’t really harm that comes from being told a bird is something different than it is, it’s not really a problem. These apps can certainly have some accurate information, but it comes down to human knowledge to be able to really determine if they’re correct.

 

[OswinOswald]

So as a disclaimer I do not have knowledge myself on foraging, but on occasion I’ve watched videos from people who do cuz it is an interesting thing to watch people discuss even if I don’t have the expertise myself. And what I’ve gathered from things I’ve heard these people discuss is that if you’re going to be eating something, you do not want to blindly trust an app. It can be an interesting starting point, and if you’re just looking at plants and want to know what something is they can be interesting to help get you likely identifiers, but none of these things are accurate enough to trust them with your health. Similarly animal identifying apps are also not perfect, but given that there isn’t really harm that comes from being told a bird is something different than it is, it’s not really a problem. These apps can certainly have some accurate information, but it comes down to human knowledge to be able to really determine if they’re correct.

Agree, on Merlin the app is like having a birding book. It helps you narrow things down, but then it presents you with a list of options and more information about them. So then I read about the birds' migration patterns, and how they look as juveniles vs adults, etc.
It's just easier to interact with and carry around, imo.

But yeah, I totally agree that the first rule of mushroom hunting is not to eat ANYTHING you aren't totally sure of. All th videos I've seen also seem to say it takes going on a lot of trips with experienced mushroom hunters before you might feel confident identifying anything on your own.