sorry i'm just impatient and spent alot of time hunting today. so what do you suggest? do i have to buy a book? can i read something online? do i buy a poster? also running around in some farmers field looking at cow crap might get me shot or arrested, neither of which i have an interest in. I'll stick to my woodland adventures, but this late into the year is it even worth doing all this work?

I don't know about the "right" way to go about things since I know nothing about mushroom identification, but I know that the only way I would ingest a wild mushroom would be if I first took classes taught by experts and then went out hunting with someone who is experienced and could show me what I'm looking for in the field. This is one area where arming yourself with as much info and experience possible is a necessity, and to do that takes time and patience. Giving in to instant gratification on this subject can kill you. Buying books and understanding them is a good start but that's it.

Yeah, it's just important to know what you're about to eat (or make a drink with).

If you're not sure, you're not sure.

I want to be doubly sure, and then triply sure, that I know what I'm about to eat, before I eat it.

If you want to know about growing mushrooms, go check out the vaults at mycotopia.net.

Most libraries have a book or two on mushroom identification. Another way to go about it is to look at all the species of psilocybes and find which ones grow in your area; note the habitat, the toxic look-alikes, etc. Despite your aversion to cow pastures, liberty caps would probably be a good species to specifically hunt for.

And for the record, the previous warnings weren't tree-hugging hippie talk... they were Old Testament-style mycotoxic smiting talk.

The last picture you provided looks a bit like a birch polypore. But mushrooms can be deceptive, even to the most knowledgeable of mycologists.

You cannot eat birch polypore.

Hope that helps
xx

" liberty caps would probably be a good species to specifically hunt for."

yes i remember seeing ALOT of these in the spring, but i've never seen them again since. i guess i'll buy a book and give up my weekend hunts. :*(

I'm kind of surprised no one pointed out how terrible those photos are, don't EVER use a cellphone for mushroom pictures.

Get books, get as many as you can manage. I highly recommend Roger Philips' books, his photography and descriptions are wonderful. Make sure that you have NEW books, anything published more then 10 years ago is out of date, in a few more years, ALL the books will be re-written. This is especially true in the New World, Old World mushroom science is a bit more stable. Make sure the books are for your area, do not use foreign guides!!! DO NOT use a European book in the US, there are look-a-likes that can be rather dangerous.

Learn the anatomy and terminology. This is done through practice. Use scientific terms as much as possible when discussing mushrooms with people, this language is of upmost importance.

READ THOSE BOOKS!!! Read them from cover to cover. You don't need to memorize, but it will all start to absorb, you'll start to see how it all works.

Go hunting with a friend, gather specimens, keep notes on them, go home, take spore prints, sit down and ID them. Try to use keys if you have some, if not, go through visually. Pick out everything they look like, and then come up with arguments as to why it is one and not the other. Do not discuss your work till you both come to conclusions, double blind ID. Use as many books to ID as possible.

There are edibles that you'll eat the first time you find them, Hercium species, Chantrelles, Puffballs, but there are others that are going to be harder, it's no big loss, there is always next year. When it comes time to eat a mushroom, edible or interesting, it will be time. Waiting is.

It is VERY dangerous to go out looking for a specific mushroom when you have never seen it before, ESPECIALLY the active ones. it is very easy to find mushrooms that match a specific description, to overlook that one feature that would point out that it is in fact dangerous.

Inpatients will kill. There is always next year, unless you die.

as for those mushrooms you posted, the second looks a whole lot like a small, old, dryad's saddle, one of my favorites to cook.

As for going online for ID. Make sure you have GOOD pictures, if they are blurry or over exposed, they are useless, they should show the tops, the bottoms, the undersides, the size, details of the pore surface. Include info on the location they were gathered, the type of tree they came from, or if they were on the ground (make sure they are in soil and not on a buried branch), spore print, I can't stress enough the importance of spore prints.

Mushroom hunting is a course of study, it take a lot of time and dedication if one wishes to do it for long.

Those don't really look like psilocybes to me. I wouldn't eat them. But gee people, you are really ragging on this guy for no reason. Calling him stupid for picking mushrooms he is unsure about...why? He didn't eat them, he wanted to identify them before eating them. And you say respecting nature, only take what you need etc, but again...why? Once the mushroom has fruited and released its spores, its work is done, the fungus isn't hurt by picking its fruits anymore than a tree is. And if he is indeed picking poisonous mushrooms, you can't argue that he's stealing some wildlife's food since they're, ya know, poisonous.

Also I think the -danger- from mushroom hunting is way overstated. Now of course I don't want to be the one that says this and then dies, or encourages someone to disregard warnings and them dying, but seriously. I NEVER see anything in the news about people dying from shrooming and I live in a place where wild hallucinogenic mushrooms grow all the time, like 8 or 9 months out of the year, and people eat the fuck out of them. Whenever I've gone gathering, I end up with such a huge amount of fungus that anything I'm unsure of I just don't eat and I stick to the ones that are clearly psilocybes based on bruising, gills/veil, and spore color (never really bother with a print, most of the wild mushrooms I've found have already dropped the spores necessary for a print anyway). The potency of wild mushrooms usually leaves a lot to be desired since I've had my fair share of cultivated fungus as well which is leaps and bounds better. But I would bet, unless you picked and ate a large amount of a very toxic mushroom, the worst that's going to happen to you if you eat the wrong mushroom is you vomit or get the shits.

Maybe I should shut my mouth since I sort of know what I'm looking for. But I recommend checking your local news and see if there's ever any reports of mushroom poisoning so you know which dangerous species, if any, to watch out for in your area.

Those are definitely 100% NOT psychoactive mushrooms. They are also not the main common edible species normally found on dead trees. Don't eat them.

My advise get a north american mushroom guide. Pick only common and easy to identify mushrooms for eating. Always consult someone who knows better preferably a local mycologist.



One of my professors was a professional mycologist. Every single year in our local area people died eating wild mushrooms. Just because its not in the news doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

Furthermore very toxic mushrooms can kill you in low doses from eating 1 or half of 1.

I would think that if people were dying when hunting for psychedelic mushrooms, it WOULD be on the news because it would further the political agenda of the war on drugs by making people scared of them. Plus, I HAVE seen news stories related to mushroom poisoning, although not in my area, and not related to psychedelic mushroom hunters. My hometown where I grew up, which has a lot more shrooming fields than my current city, was also a relatively small town and I can pretty much guarantee it would be in the news if it were a problem.

It's definitely not a good idea to just go eat random mushrooms if you don't know what you're looking for. But just because some psilocybes may have toxic lookalikes, doesn't mean those lookalikes are growing in the same area as psilocybes grow in your area, although it's possible. In my neck of the woods, people as young as high school kids go out shrooming, and I'd bet they aren't the most educated on the subject, but they come out fine.

I'm not condoning this however! DON'T EAT WHAT YOU DON'T 100% TRUST!

By the way I should mention the local area I was referring to was the size of a state in the US. So I'm sure it made the news in the towns where it happened. It was always edible mushrooms too as far as I know not psychedelic mushroom hunting. Psychedelic mushrooms did not grow in this area.