1059
Mushroom ID
(mander.xyz)
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
2 mushrooms hard to fuck up in America.
Chicken of the Forest.
Morels.
I remember selling like 5 lbs of morels when I was a kid and getting like $200. That was without even driving to the city to make the real money.
note that chicken of the woods may give about 50% of people horrible nausea for several hours
Sure, if you're weak. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laetiporus
It's not near 50% of people though.
It seems I misremembered this story that I read years ago after eating some and feeling queasy for several hours:
https://blog.mycology.cornell.edu/2006/10/31/eating-the-chicken-of-the-woods/
Chicken of the Woods is the shit!!!
What, a wood pilz that is edible?
There are also mushrooms that look like morels that you shouldn't eat. Somewhat easy to filter out if you know what you're looking for but maybe wouldn't say hard to fuck up.
Can you show me some that would grow in the same areas next to dead elms? I'm unfamiliar with any and I've foraged for them a lot.
E: Looks like this has some info on False Morels further below. I'd have a difficult time mistaking one for the other myself but eh?
https://www.bhg.com/news/how-to-find-morel-mushrooms/
https://www.thegreatmorel.com/false-morels/
I think some people want to find morels so bad they get a sort of "buck fever" and convince themselves they've found one. That's all I can imagine because to my eyes they would be hard to mix up. Same with chanterelle and false chanterelle. Like... sure, I guess if you are profoundly incautious.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6hA0wqLVkY - True vs False Chanterelle for the curious.
I'm not informed enough to answer any of your questions about them. You should find a better source than my fuzzy memory. I just remember being warned about them since morel picking is fairly popular around where I live.