Picking mushrooms in the forest is fun and easy on the household budget. What’s more, mushroom dishes are delicious. But deadly dangers also lurk in forests and meadows: Poisonous mushrooms. In the case of the Deathcap mushroom, one mushroom is enough to kill an adult. The mean thing: The Deathcap mushroom, as well as other poisonous mushrooms, can be confused with edible mushrooms if you are not really familiar with them. In addition, there are tasty mushrooms in Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean that look very similar to the tuberous-leaf mushroom. That leads again and again to mushroom poisonings with migrants. This is pointed out by the Federal Institute for Risk Assessment.
You can protect yourself from mushroom poisoning if you can reliably distinguish between the different types of mushrooms. But that takes more than an app on your cell phone. For those who are unsure, there are mushroom experts and mushroom advice centers. Until the end of October, you can have your self-collected mushrooms examined by mushroom experts from the German Society for Mycology on Sundays from 3 to 4:30 p.m. at the Natural History Museum in Reutlingen (Am Weibermarkt 4). In Gomaringen, mushroom expert Karl-Heinz Baumann also offers to inspect collected mushrooms by appointment. (Karl-Heinz Baumann, lime tree road 40, 72810 Gomaringen telephone 07072/7092 kh.baumann@t-online.de).
Baumann points out that it is important to collect mushrooms in air-permeable baskets, because they spoil quickly in plastic bags. Still in the forest one should clean them roughly. Cotton bags are also suitable, “but then the mushrooms are easily crushed”. You should eat them as fresh as possible, “but never raw”, says Baumann. According to the German Society for Mycology, except for cultivated mushrooms and porcini, raw edible mushrooms are generally poisonous. Depending on the variety, they can be stored in the refrigerator for one or two days.
In addition to the tuberous-leaved mushroom, there are a number of other mushrooms that are poisonous and can cause at least severe gastrointestinal distress. Anyone who feels unwell after eating a mushroom meal should contact a doctor or an advice center such as the Poison Information Center of the Freiburg University Hospital (0761/19240). Poisoning by tuber leaf mushrooms is also so dangerous because the symptoms often appear only after days. By then, however, the poison has already done great damage to the body.
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Giftpilze. Welche Pilze sind gefährlich und welche nicht? Foto: tünews INTERNATIONAL / Theresa Melnyk.
