KNOW WHAT YOU ARE PICKING
By Ken Allen

Kennebec Journal
08/16/2008
ME

Dry years have less of an effect on encouraging folks to become wild
mushroom gatherers, but this wet summer has fungi sprouting on lawns,
beside roads and in forests and fields. Such obvious abundance has
folks talking about becoming amateur mycologists more so than usual.

I once picked wild mushrooms on a routine basis, a serious hobby
that lasted 12 years before an incident spooked me enough to quit,
but I’m getting way ahead of my story.

My stint as a mushroomer began one August 35 years ago when a
Massachusetts native of Armenian descent taught me a few basics as
I followed him around the woods.

This wonderful gentleman passed away years ago after a long life of
running hounds, fly-fishing and living partly off the land, gathering
wild foods and gardening. His parents were born in Eastern Europe,
where mushrooming is a national pastime, and he learned from them.

My mentor and his wife were staying on Frost Pond near the Penobscot’s
West Branch by Ripogenus Dam when we met, and in this northern
latitude and high elevation, mushrooms associated with fall around
central Maine were growing there in mid-August.

This fellow stressed a concept. He claimed that the North American
mushroom family contained about the same percentage of poisonous
species as this continent’s herbaceous and woody plants did, so
picking fungi proved no more dangerous than gathering plants —
the latter having ultra-toxic species, too.

Tom Seymour, an author and well-known wild-food gatherer from Waldo,
also claims this point about the percentage of poison plants vs. fungi.

Neither man was saying that wild-food gatherers could be careless,
but rather, picking the wrong plant could be as lethal as choosing
a bad mushroom. They stress this point because, for one reason or
another, Americans are far more afraid of mushrooms than plants.

My friend said that a tiny percentage of fungi proved of gourmet
quality and a small number of species would make folks very sick or
very dead, and the trick began with concentrating on the quality,
edible mushrooms and mastering identification one species at a time.

Not to belabor the point, but in this man’s estimation, most mushrooms
might possess a poor flavor or unsuitable consistency such as being
watery, but the majority were not toxic.

In that halcyon summer so many years ago, we picked Boletes, hen
of the woods, chicken of the woods, coral (a species that grows in
conifer forests) and puffballs, and years later, I learned horse
mushrooms that grow in horse pastures.

The latter looks like supermarket fungi — just giants in comparison
to the store-bought variety. Before my frightening experience,
I’d sometimes fill a paper grocery bag or two with horse mushrooms
for freezing.

Here’s what got me thinking about poison mushrooms this week:

Recently, an acquaintance of my partner and intrepid companion, Jolie,
wound up in the emergency room after eating poison mushrooms.

This might not have caught my attention, but the woman, Masha
Ben-Tepherith of Augusta, has picked mushrooms her whole life, so
she has experience galore. While growing up, she learned fungi skills
from her parents, immigrants from Russia.

A recent interview with Masha fascinated me, beginning with this:

We had quite a time, trying to communicate about which mushrooms were
which because she had learned mushroom identification in Russian
and doesn’t know the English names. I did take Russian in college
— for one day. As soon as the professor told the class we had to
learn a different alphabet, I dropped the language, so I was no help
with Masha.

Apparently, Masha, her sister and the sister’s boyfriend had picked
a species, thinking the mushrooms were puffballs, but according to
Masha, the fungi turned out being a poison variety colloquially called
"earth ball."

When her sister sliced the first mushroom, the center was a lovely
purple rather than puffball white. The odd color concerned Masha,
but the sister, who has also picked mushrooms her whole life, felt
the fungi were fine and cooked them.

To complicate matters, Masha has recently suffered abdominal pains,
so when the bad mushrooms started causing her stomach problems,
she figured it was more of the same ailment — not a case of poisoning.

However, the stomachache turned to excruciating pain, so the three
of them headed to the emergency room. Soon, the sister and boyfriend
were also suffering with typical symptoms of mushroom poisoning —
stomach pains, sweating, vomiting and diarrhea. In fact, the guy
passed out and fell onto the ER floor.

When all three were suffering at the hospital, Masha and her sister
realized that they had made a horrible mistake, but they lived to
tell the tale.

It must be stressed that the two women are not casual fungi gatherers,
either, illustrating that experienced folks may get themselves in
trouble. No one is immune to making a mistake.

My scare also came with puffballs but proved far less dramatic. After
eating this common mushroom for 12 years, I read in a book that if a
sliced puffball had the tracing of a mushroom on the inside slices
— beware. It’s not a puffball, but rather, an extremely poisonous
species. I didn’t know that tidbit and would have eaten it tracing
or not — probably killing myself.

My lesson?

If I were going to gather mushrooms, I needed to know far more than
what a brief summer had taught me.

For folks like myself not born into mushrooming, I’ve often thought of
joining some group such as The Maine Mycological Association, amateur
and professional fanciers of wild mushrooms and other fungi. MMA
formed in 1985. The Web site is
and the e-mail is: mmacontact@hotmail.com.

It was either go that route or enroll in a course at a community
college or night class at a high school.

If someone is going to pick mushrooms, this fall would be the time
to sign up somewhere because this is a grand year for picking.

Ken Allen, of Belgrade Lakes, is a writer, editor and photographer.