Every mushroom is poisonous, every gun is loaded

I am always telling people that while spending years studying and harvesting mushrooms, I still treat every new find as if I have never harvested a mushroom before.

It is the corollary of the gun safety mindset, “every gun is loaded.” My take is “every mushroom is poisonous” or “guilty until proven innocent.”

That wisdom proved wise twice over the weekend.

One time was at the Aquarium during Niagara Beautification Commission cleanup. Someone pointed out a large mushroom in the grass. I thought it was agaricus campestrus, meadow mushroom. I left it. Later, I noticed the baseball-sized fruitbody had been kicked over, probably by a kid being a kid. How dare they!

I had planned to leave it alone, but since it was damaged, I grabbed it, wrapped it in a paper towel and transported it home.

Most of the agaricus family look vaguely similar but there are look-a-likes included the destroying angel of the Amanita family which can lead to agonizing death.

I left the baseball sized mushroom on the paper towel hoping it would open up and leave a brown sporeprint. It would go great with eggs Sunday morning.

When I checked it, it had turned black and putrified. That made it a shaggy mane (coprinoid) which I have seen in that area of Niagara Falls but never messed with.

Shaggy mane are choice edible if picked and cooked almost immediately with one problem. If you have consumed alcohol within days of consuming that mushroom, they can make you sick, as in give you a horrible hangover or worse even if you consumed alcohol two days ago.

One down. Then Sunday, we headed to Stonehaven Nature Preserve for a Mothers’ Day hike. We had been there a week ago when the spring beauty were exploding.

Sunday, on the same trail, brown, button shaped mushrooms had exploded from the woodchips. Hundreds of them. I could have collected 30 pounds. Instead, I grabbed a smattering of about 30, took them home and took lots of pictures.

I spread them out on a cookie sheet and pulled out my mushroom books. It turns out they are Little Brown Mushrooms (most likely agrocybe) a confusing group of mushrooms met in the guide books with admonitions like “some little brown mushrooms are toxic none should be eaten due to the difficulty in identification.”

And with that, there are no mushrooms being eaten in our home. At least not this week.