How To Distinguish Edible Mushrooms From Poisonous Ones And Not Bring Grebes And Fly Agarics From The Forest

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

The dangers of a quiet hunt

Quite soon, the season of quiet hunting will burst - the season of collecting tasty and healthy mushrooms, and rows of mushroom pickers will stretch in orderly rows into the forests in order to collect as many of these gifts of nature as possible. When they come home, they can cook them or dry them and leave them in reserve. Unfortunately, not all mushrooms are useful, some can be severely poisoned, and a number of especially dangerous ones may well lead to human death.

It is extremely difficult to know all the tribes by sight, because there are several thousand types of them only in Russia, but everyone is quite capable of remembering the most dangerous of them, with this you will save both yourself and your loved ones.

Let's start with the names - the most dangerous mushrooms containing a huge amount of poison are: pale toadstool, smelly fly agaric, waxy gossip and fiber patuyara. These mushrooms retain poison in their body not only after soaking, but even after drying, boiling and salting. Absolutely everyone who is going to go fishing should know them.

Death cap

Death cap

The most famous and most dangerous mushroom, on account of which more than a dozen lives, is the pale grebe. This mushroom can be found in both coniferous and deciduous forests. The first toadstools appear at the very beginning of summer, and you can run into them later until the frost.

The toadstool has a convex cap, which becomes prostrate with age. Its color can be white, yellowish-brown or light green. The pulp on a break or cut is white, odorless and tasteless, and the stem of this mushroom is thin and long with an extension below, rounded, most often white, but sometimes yellowish. A characteristic feature - on the leg, closer to the hat, there is always and is clearly visible a white skirt that encircles the leg with a ring.

This mushroom is quite peculiar, but you can still confuse it - with an edible champignon. However, unlike the poisonous mushroom, the champignon has pink or brown plates and the ring is very thin and filmy.

There is also a green variety of pale toadstool, it can be confused with a green russula, but the russula's leg does not expand downward like a toadstool, and it does not have a ringlet.

Another danger of pale toadstool is that the first signs of poisoning sometimes appear no earlier than an hour after eating it.

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Stinky fly agaric

Stinky fly agaric

In many ways similar to the pale toadstool smelly fly agaric. Its cap is conical, pure white, but gives away its flesh - it has a very pungent, unpleasant odor.

The leg of the stinky fly agaric is even, at the base it noticeably thickens. There is also a ring, it is white and rather delicate.

Fiber patuillard

Fiber patuillard

In deciduous and coniferous forests, you can find patuillard fiber. The dangerous thing is that this poisonous mushroom often grows among champignons and other edible mushrooms.

The cap of the filamentous fungus is conical at a young age, and as the mushroom body ages, it straightens. In young mushrooms, the color of the cap is whitish, then it becomes straw-yellow and, finally, in old mushrooms it acquires a reddish tint. The stem has the same color as the cap and a noticeable bulge at the base.

Waxy talker

Waxy talker

At the very end of summer or at the beginning of autumn, you can also find a waxy talker. It lives in both mixed and coniferous forests.

The whole mushroom - both the leg and the cap - are white. The dangerous thing is that both the taste and smell of the pulp of the mushroom are quite pleasant, well, but a special distinguishing feature is only that the plates pass from the cap to the leg.

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So, we have dealt with the deadly mushrooms, now we move on to the category of highly poisonous ones. These are the mushrooms that almost never lead to death, but cause severe poisoning, fraught with complications and loss of health.

Gall mushroom

Gall mushroom

These mushrooms are sometimes quite similar in appearance to edible mushrooms, and gall mushroom or bitterness is the first on this list of masters of disguise. Even a couple of grams of this mushroom can spoil a keg of salted edible mushrooms, they all magically become bitter.

The gall mushroom is similar to the king of mushrooms - white or boletus, but the pink surface of the tubular layer, which is atypical for these edible mushrooms, pink flesh and brown, and not white like that of edible mushrooms, a net on the leg, should immediately catch your eye.

Red champignon

Red champignon

The second place is rightfully taken by the red champignon. It has most of the characteristics of an edible champignon, however it is highly toxic.

External differences, which should definitely be striking, are the yellowing of the mushroom tissue at the breaks and an unpleasant odor resembling carbolic acid.

False Foam sulfur yellow

False Foam

Sulfur-yellow false froth is confidently in third place. This is one of the few types of inedible mushrooms.

The mushroom can be quite easily distinguished by the color of the cap plates - at a young age they are sulfur-yellow, and over time they become greenish. The mushroom pulp itself has a bitter taste and should immediately raise suspicion.

Amanita witch circle

Fly agarics

The last place is occupied by mushrooms, which can be distinguished from edible ones, probably, even by a schoolboy - fly agarics. However, do not think that the fly agaric is always red. It can be white, as indicated above, and yellow, and green, and even brown.

The cap of the fly agaric is spectacular, one might say, even beautiful, it is covered with flakes characteristic only of this type of mushroom, and the leg is noticeably expanded from below and has a ringlet. The flesh of the mushroom smells so unpleasant that flies really die from this smell.

These are the main poisonous mushrooms of the forests of Russia, it is easy to remember them, but do not flatter yourself and be sure that the description will exactly correspond to what you see in the forest where this mushroom grew. Unfortunately, this is not the case, and the living conditions of the poisonous mushroom leave their mark on its appearance. Therefore, going into the forest, you need to consult with local experienced mushroom pickers about the intricacies of the appearance of this or that toadstool.

By the way, not all mushroom gatherers get them in the forest. Some are happy to find and eat those specimens that have grown in a copse, in a grove, near houses or on a lawn. However, you need to be very careful in this. Mushrooms, even edible ones, often absorb, like a sponge, various toxic substances contained in the soil of large cities and in their air. They can be harmful to health. You need to keep this in mind, and you should not risk picking mushrooms near roads along which cars move and along railway rails. For example, mushrooms such as pigs can absorb so much heavy metals that they can be poisoned almost more easily than pale toadstool.

When picking mushrooms, it is also important not only to distinguish edible from inedible, but also to properly preserve them and skillfully prepare them. You should not collect old and overgrown mushrooms, they can harm the body, and cooking them is long and difficult. It is not necessary to use mushrooms damaged by pests for food, and, of course, if the mushroom is in doubt, then it is better to leave it in place. Be guided by a simple and understandable rule for everyone - I take only what I know.

After bringing the mushrooms home, you must immediately sort them out and use them. There is no point in delaying processing - mushrooms, especially those in plastic bags, will not last long. The only exception here can be porcini mushrooms - they lie for a long time, being frozen.

When cooking mushrooms, pay more attention to conditionally edible ones, for example, such as milk mushrooms: first you need to boil them, then drain the broth. And only then can you salt or fry. By the way, about salting: it is better to pickle mushrooms in containers with air access, and not in an airtight container, as some think. This is the only way to completely protect yourself from botulism poisoning.

Well, in conclusion, about what to do if someone is still poisoned by mushrooms. Firstly, you should immediately call an ambulance, and while she is driving, you do not need to groan and run around - you should induce vomiting from the poisoned person as soon as possible and clear the stomach. After that, you need to put the person to bed and apply a heating pad to his feet.

Nikolay Khromov, Candidate of Agricultural Sciences, Researcher, Department of Berry Crops, GNU VNIIS im. I. V. Michurina, member of the R&D Academy

Photo by Olga Rubtsova