More on mushrooms

I gleaned this from that link:

Mushrooms are excellent at concentrating metals and toxins. The Chernobyl disaster demonstrated this all too well. So do not use mushrooms growing in areas where herbicides, pesticides, or other chemicals have been used, or along busy roadways and next to old houses where the soil may contain lead.

Click to expand...

Maybe you can use a mushroom that is known to be edible, only tainted by some sort of accident.

How about the Amanita verna vs. Amanita virosa?

http://www.rogersmushrooms.com/gallery/DisplayBlock~bid~5564.asp

In Michigan we have Morel mushrooms which are very popular in the spring for eating. People go temporarily insane finding these things...seriously. It's like a frickin' cult.

But there is what we call a fake Morel (I have no idea what it's actually called) that looks very similar to a Morel except that the top is attached differently to the stem. They do make people very, very sick and I'm assuming if she ate enough, it would probably kill her.

Quick mushroom work story: Man calls 911 because 40 year old wife is horribly ill. Vomiting, in and out of conciousness...basically "circling the drain", if you will. She was dying. This is why...she had gone for a walk and saw a mushroom growing in the ditch. So she picked it and ate it. Raw, right there along the road. Can I just say, Duh? She made it but was very, very sick for several days and in the hospital.

Sorry for the hijack...story just cracks me up. Had to share!

It's been a while since I looked at my mushroom books but I seem to recall that the Panther (amanita very poisonous) and Blusher (I think also amanita but edible) look very much alike.

The false morels will make you sick, but I don't think they'd be fatal. (And, yes, we have morels in Ohio too and I spend lots of springtime hours out looking for them. Delicious!) Puma

My first thought was to suggest morels and false morels. False morels can be lethal if ingested raw. Some of the amanitas are extremely dangerous--one shroom killeth.
Depends on how astute she was (amanitas are harder to distinguish than the morels... takes a pretty inexperienced person to confuse false and true morels) and the scenario for whether it was just a single mushroom, out hiking tried one, ate raw, cooked up a bunch... And while both of these are in the Pac NW, I do not know if the midwest has our amanitas.

Kristie, are your shrooms really moral? Ours aren't. Must be the better midwest upbringing yours get. <grin-beam>

Yes, amanitas are in the midwest. Most fatalities are due to this variety, which is easily mistaken for an edible mushroom. Although there are other varieties of toxic mushrooms, they rarely cause fatalities as long as the person gets adequate medical care.

The general rule of thumb is that the longer it takes to develop symptoms, the more toxic the mushroom, so if you want this to be potentially fatal then make her wait 6 hours or so before she starts puking.

I'd have to hunt for the date, but in western New York state an entire family died 5-7 years ago after mistaking amanitas in a large public park for a similar edible mushroom in their native Cambodia (or Laos, maybe? I forget). Terribly sad. Come here with your small kids to start a new life, and wham, what you don't know kills you.

Maryn, who buys them in cellophane packages, thank you

Same situation here last year. Older couple. Wife survived, husband didn't make it. His liver enzymes were off the charts before he died.