#boletus

So these were posted over on the MushroomID subreddit; the person holding them reportedly ate the mushroom in the bottom of the bunch raw, and intended to eat the rest, claiming all of them were the same species, "borellis" (maybe a mispronunciation of Boletus). Is he going to be okay?

Well....not entirely. While the unspotted mushroom looks like a nice, edible king bolete (Boletus edulis), the other three are Amanitas, likely either a yellow variant of fly agaric (Amanita muscaria), or Amanita chrysoblema (a synonym for A. muscaria var. guessowii). While these are not the sorts of Amanita that have amatoxins that will dissolve your liver, they contain muscimol and ibotenic acid (the latter of which both enhances absorption of muscimol and can also be converted to it.)

So he likely won't die, but he's potentially in for some unpleasant cycling between drowsiness and delirium/hallucinations, probably some ataxia and other neurological impacts on physical movement, and a lot of vomiting, especially as he ate the thing raw. There is always the chance of severe, life-threatening side effects such as cardiopulmonary arrest, but this is pretty rare.

Yes, there are people who deliberately take A. muscaria for its hallucinogenic and relaxing effects, and there's debate over whether you can effectively reduce the active ingredients through parboiling. Still, there are reasons my personal rule for eating mushrooms is that unless everyone agrees it's safe to eat, I'm not gonna try it. Given that I often find B. edulis in the same places and at the same time as A. muscaria, I'm just going to eat the boletes instead.

A cursory look at the mushrooms he had would have shown anyone with any actual foraging experience that they were two very different species. The hymenophores are different--gills versus pores--and the Amanitas have remnant veils (spots, potentially rings and cups) that the Boletus lacks. That's not even getting into things like taking a spore print (the Boletus should be olive green, while the Amanitas will be white.)

This, once again, is why my foraging classes focus so much on identification skills, and getting into specific traits to pay attention to, rather than just scrolling through a bunch of pictures of edible species. And it's why I dedicated an entire chapter of The Everyday Naturalist to these same traits and identification skills for fungi. I know it's a lot of information to keep in mind, but this isn't something where you want to take a short cut.

Boletus,,, a new boy.

He's like; a zombie.

no matter what the cemetery mushrooms will always be there for me

#BAKED MUSHROOMS are a fantastic choice for a meal to celebrate AUTUMN EQUINOX👩🏼‍🍳🍄‍🟫🍽️😋👌🏻