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Mushie-Roomi-Rooms
updated: Feb 17, 2013, 6:57 PM

By Edhat Subscriber

Can you please help ID the mushrooms. Is there an expert who can help? UCSB? Thanks!

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Comments in order of when they were received | (reverse order)

COMMENT 375536	2013-02-17 08:12 PM
Do not eat them!!! They are definitely NOT chanterelles.
COMMENT 375540P	2013-02-17 08:33 PM
Every time someone shows mushrooms on Edhat and asks for an i.d., I think of that guy who picked the 'shrooms up on the Wilcox Property. Apparently, he was someone who knew his mushrooms. Or so he thought. He ate his great find, and then died fairly quickly, at Cottage Hospital. That was about five years ago. Don't play around with fungi. A dangerous game.
COMMENT 375541P	2013-02-17 08:35 PM
Okay. I looked it up. He died May 2010. The article said it was "a lifelong hobby" for him, the collecting and eating of wild mushrooms.
BJGREEN	2013-02-17 08:59 PM
Try sending your pix to Dr. Bob Cummings at SBCC: rjcummings@pipeline.sbcc.edu He identified a really weird fungus that I found last year as "dead man's foot".
AQUAHOLIC	2013-02-17 09:31 PM
Absolutely NOT Chanterelles...No way, no how. PLEASE, do not eat them, in fact, I hope you washed your hands well after handling them. Chanterelles grow in Mature Oak woodlands, usually in deep leaf litter and typically poison oak is plentiful. As the saying goes, "there are old mushroom hunters, bold mushroom hunters, but NO old, bold, mushroom hunters." Take heed.
COMMENT 375561P	2013-02-17 11:13 PM
Seems a pity to have picked them without knowing what they are ... and now to throw them away. Maybe next time ID ( with a mushroom book) and then pick or leave alone.
COMMENT 375567P	2013-02-18 02:30 AM
561P: I'm with you on this one.
OOHLALA	2013-02-18 06:48 AM
Show us the top side too!
COMMENT 375581	2013-02-18 07:00 AM
@561P I knock over every mushroom I see. They're a plague on humanity to be eradicated.
COMMENT 375585	2013-02-18 07:15 AM
These appear to be milk caps, Lactarius alnicola. W/o seeing them in person and checking "key characteristisics", it's a guess. I can't quite see if the stems have large, faint spots. When fresh, all parts exude a milky white latex where cut. This is diagnostic, and might still be seen on gills of fresher specimens if sliced. Older and dried out ones will not exude latex. "Alnicola" indicates "with alder (Alnus)", but no, they grow under live oak. They could be confused with chanterelles: similar size, color, the seemingly decurrent gills, and occurence with oak. Inedible, but probably not toxic, due to very acrid (burning hot pepper) compound. Handling isn't a problem. Fatalities occur only when people eat large amounts of toxic species.
COMMENT 375612	2013-02-18 08:24 AM
561: Actually pulling them out likely did nothing. If anything, it helped to release the spores. There are millions of mycorrhizae under the soil you can't see or get to. 581: You do realize fungi are the most important decomposer in most environments? Without them, humans wouldn't exist.
COMMENT 375617P	2013-02-18 08:45 AM
Fungi are one of the most important groups of organisms on the planet. This is easy to overlook, given their largely hidden, unseen actions and growth. They are important in an enormous variety of ways. Recycling - Fungi, together with bacteria, are responsible for most of the recycling which returns dead material to the soil in a form in which it can be reused. Without fungi, these recycling activities would be seriously reduced. We would effectively be lost under piles many metres thick, of dead plant and animal remains. Mycorrhizae and plant growth - Fungi are vitally important for the good growth of most plants, including crops, through the development of mycorrhizal associations. As plants are at the base of most food chains, if their growth was limited, all animal life, including human, would be seriously reduced through starvation. Food - Fungi are also important directly as food for humans. Many mushrooms are edible and different species are cultivated for sale worldwide. While this is a very small proportion of the actual food that we eat, fungi are also widely used in the production of many foods and drinks. These include cheeses, beer and wine, bread, some cakes, and some soya bean products. While a great many wild fungi are edible, it can be difficult to correctly identify them. Some mushrooms are deadly if they are eaten. Fungi with names such as 'Destroying Angel' and 'Death Cap' give us some indication that it would not be a terribly good idea to eat them! In some countries, collecting wild mushrooms to eat is a popular activity. It is always wise to be totally sure that what you have collected is edible and not a poisonous look-a-like. Medicines - Penicillin, perhaps the most famous of all antibiotic drugs, is derived from a common fungus called Penicillium. Many other fungi also produce antibiotic substances, which are now widely used to control diseases in human and animal populations. The discovery of antibiotics revolutionized health care worldwide. http://www.countrysideinfo.co.uk/fungi/importce.htm
COMMENT 375654	2013-02-18 09:40 AM
Better punted than hunted.
COMMENT 375676	2013-02-18 10:12 AM
Pictures of fake Chanterelles on your kitchen counter, on Edhat.... Yup, you're definitely a Green Horn. Ha!
PAMSB	2013-02-18 11:57 AM
Here is the article from the Los Angeles Times about the Santa Barbara man dying after eating the mushrooms he picked near Arroyo Burro beach: http://articles.latimes.com/2009/mar/12/local/me-poison12 It was actually 2009 (not 2010).
COMMENT 375726	2013-02-18 12:05 PM
I believe 581 is parodying the cairn-topplers of a thread a few days ago.
COMMENT 375727P	2013-02-18 12:05 PM
61P: Mushrooms aren't the whole plant, picking them doesn't hurt the mycelium underground - they're fruiting bodies, basidiocarps, produced by the fungus.
AUNTIE S.	2013-02-18 02:24 PM
The top picture looks like a group of shmoos. (If you're too young to know what they are- Google 'em).

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