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Mushrooms! How I wish I knew which ones are not poisonous!

By
Real Estate Agent with RE/MAX Advantage

Taking a walk can be rather boring.  But while I was walking this morning I got all excited about the crop of mushrooms that had just popped up.

These are giant mushrooms!  One of them would fill your plate!  They looked like the ones in the grocery store that cost major dollars.

MushroomsMushroomsMushrooms

So can someone give us a few lessons on how to harvest a mushroom or toadstool as they are sometimes called in the South?  I have only known one person in my life who felt confident about gathering fresh mushrooms and safely eating them.  She no longer lives in Searcy.

Master of all knowledge, Don Thompson, are you also a mushroom expert?

Show All Comments
Rob D. Shepherd
RETIRED - Florence, OR
RETIRED

My grandparents use to collect and eat them. As for me if the local grocery store doesn't sell them, I don't want them.

Sep 19, 2012 07:15 AM
Don Thompson
Donthomp Associates - Sunnyvale, CA

Tricky business. I had a master gardner from California visit me and he looked over my mushrooms. He could ID most of them but suggested that I proceed with caution. I decided I would buy from the grocery store. There are very slight differences in appearance between toxic and nontoxic mushrooms. 

One very interesting mushroom was the  chanterelles. 

chanterelle

 The poisonous species is the jack-o'-lantern mushroom which has been misidentified as chanterelles, but can usually be distinguished by their well-developed unforked gills and yellow-orange interior flesh (the yellow orange color of chanterelles is confined to their surface; their interiors are white)

So you see there is much to learn about mushrooms before eating that fungii in your yard.

Sep 19, 2012 07:57 AM
Barbara S. Duncan
RE/MAX Advantage - Searcy, AR
GRI, e-PRO, Executive Broker, Searcy AR

Rob, you are with the majority.

Well, Don, if you can't help I guess I will never be able to take that desire off my "bucket list."  : (  The mushrooms are so plentiful, too! 

Sep 19, 2012 09:56 PM
Anonymous
Anita

We have several spots of the yellow ones (in clusters) in our yard now, thanks to the recent rain.

I think Agatha Christie had someone murdered by eating poisonous mushrooms in one of her 87 (don't quote me on that) mysterys.  In literature, I think it's a fairly common way to bump someone off.

Actually having mushrooms tonight in a stir fry....and I had already decided to do that BEFORE your blog, Barbara.

Your friend who no longer lives in Searcy and eats wild mushrooms:  is she LIVING somewhere else?

I see Don didn't let us down. 

 

Sep 19, 2012 11:05 PM
#4
Anonymous
Debbie Wantulok

I know I can't tell the difference...we have yellow bell looking mushrooms in the backyard...odd looking...in west Little Rock there was an older woman who used to go mushroom collecting and she ate them but I remember her getting sick when I was a kid...someone thought she had biten into the wrong mushroom...I guess some are more dangerous than others...she was really old though...

Aren't there several Native American stories about wild mushroom's? 

There are certainly plenty of little kids stories that include mushrooms...I wonder where those visions came from?

Since we can't eat the mushrooms...maybe there will be some old stories that some can share...Anita mentioned the Agatha Mysteries already...

Sep 20, 2012 01:51 AM
#5
Barbara S. Duncan
RE/MAX Advantage - Searcy, AR
GRI, e-PRO, Executive Broker, Searcy AR

Anita, my friend was Gwen Pyeatt, if I remember correctly.  She was able, so she said, to choose wild mushrooms and know they were safe.  It impressed me a lot and made me wonder how folks could learn that.  If Don hasn't learned it, it must be some deep dark secrect.  Maybe in our old age, we should just start experimenting and see what happens.

Debbie, I saw some more pretty ones today.  I used to paint pictures of them when they were really pretty.  Now I just snap a picture.  Do you think we have been mislead on how dangerous mushrooms are?

Sep 20, 2012 11:14 AM
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