Mushroom Collecting 101: The foolproof four

Note: Some wild mushrooms are poisonous, and they may resemble edible species. Eating them may make you sick or kill you. It is your responsibility to identify any wild food with 100% certainty before you eat it.

I’m very much interested in harvesting wild mushrooms, however mushrooms are scary business! Eating the wrong mushroom can make you severely ill or in some cases kill you! In fact there is even a mushroom called “The Angel of Death“.

So how can you get started into mushrooming without worrying about killing yourself?

Well first off all I would suggest locating your local mushrooming club if there is one around. Your good friend Google should know where they are.

The best place to start with mushrooming is without a doubt “The Foolproof four”. These 4 mushrooms are named because they are very easy to identify and they do not have many poisonous look alikes.

The foolproof four are:

Puffball Mushroom
Puffball Mushroom (beautifulcataya)
Chicken of the woods
Chicken of the woods ( minicooper93402)
morel
Morel (melystu
Chanterelle
Chanterelle (ivanteage)

Warnings

Mushrooming Skills I want to learn

  • Learning your local areas and knowing where to look
  • Learning to identify tree types. Knowing which type of trees are growing is one of the most important aspects of determining which mushrooms you are likely to find
  • Spore Prints: The color and pattern of the mushroom spores are the safest way to properly identify a mushroom.

I’ll be joining and attending local mushroom events and will of course keep the blog up to date with my progress.