Poisonous Mushrooms

2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38

Everything in nature is arranged very harmoniously, there is nothing superfluous. Wandering through the forest in search of edible mushrooms, do not rush to kick a toadstool or fly agaric out of frustration. Poisonous to humans, they benefit some animals, they work as forest orderlies, destroying old stumps and trunks felled by storms, processing last year's leaves and broken branches into fertilizers. Without them, the forest would have turned into an impenetrable thicket. So, just go around them without touching them with your hands or a sharp knife

Fly agarics

Fly agarics know everything. Their cute red hats with white dots from early childhood are viewed in books and enlivened in coloring pages. This brings their chances of getting into the mushroom picker basket to zero. Unless you just decided to prepare a folk remedy for the disease, in which the fly agaric must certainly participate. And for soup for dinner, no one dares to collect them.

Amanita loves not only red outfits, but also gray and brown ones. The so-called panther fly agaric wears a brown hat with white speckled warts. Located in parallel circles across the entire cap, the specks transform the mushroom into little panther cubs hiding in the grass.

Amanita is not only the orderly of the forest, but also its healer. Handsome elk eat fly agarics to get rid of parasitic worms. Squirrels, slugs, magpies also cannot do without fly agarics. It helps birches, spruces, pines and other trees grow.

With his elegant hat, he makes the forest more beautiful, delighting everyone who knows how to enjoy beauty. As a poison for the human body, it is good for the soul.

Pale and white toadstools

The easily recognizable fly agaric does not create problems for the mushroom picker. It is much more difficult to distinguish toadstools, which are "doubles" of edible mushrooms. These include pale and white toadstools.

Being a double of the delicious champignon, the pale toadstool turns into a dangerous and insidious enemy of man. The insidiousness of the toadstool lies in the slow action of its poison, which manifests itself 12 and sometimes 30 hours after the meal, when it is almost impossible to fight the action of the poison.

Of course, you can tell a toadstool from a champignon:

* Firstly, by the unpleasant smell coming from the toadstools, while the champignon smells of pleasant freshness.

* Secondly, you need to look under the mushroom cap to see the color of its plates. The champignon has pink plates, which later turn into purple. The plates of both toadstools are white. The color of the cap of the pale toadstool has a greenish tint, and the white one, which is also called the "stinking fly agaric", is white.

* Thirdly, in toadstools at the base of the leg, you can see shreds of a torn pouch if it has not been covered with earth. The leg of the white toadstool is not smooth, but covered with scales that give the leg a shaggy appearance.

Along with edible champignons, a poisonous red champignon can grow, a distinctive feature of which is a reddish spot in the center of the cap; unpleasant odor; yellowing pulp at the break.

False mushrooms

Summer and autumn mushrooms, which are very easy to collect, one has only to stumble upon their colony, also have poisonous counterparts, often growing next to edible ones. To distinguish them from each other, you need to take a closer look at the color of their caps and plates.

The plates of false summer honey (or sulfur-yellow false-foams) are painted in greenish or sulfur-yellow shades, and the poisonous color of the cap itself irritates the eye unpleasantly. Edible summer honeydew paints its plates cream or brown.

Autumn (or real) honey fungus is easy to distinguish from its poisonous counterpart, you just have to smell its white pulp. The mouth-watering mushroom aroma of real honey can not be compared with the unpleasant smell of its counterpart - false honey. In addition, the flesh of the double is not white, but yellow.

If you don't trust your sense of smell, you can compare the colors of mushroom caps and plates. In the edible honey fungus, the plates are yellowish-white, with dark spots, and in the false one - from gray to black. The double's hat is brick-red, for which it is also called "brick-red pseudo-frog".