Foraging for food is an innate behaviour in humans and something our ancestors have been doing for millennia – and fungi are among the most commonly sought-after provisions. But how dangerous is it to forage for wild mushrooms in Australia?
Foraging for food is an innate behaviour in humans, something our ancestors have been doing for millennia — and fungi are among the most commonly sought-after provisions.
"They've got this suite of enzymes and acids and they can do amazing things — anything from getting minerals from rock, all the way to decomposing some of the most horrendous toxins," Dr Tuszynska says."I see it that way because I'm looking at their function in the ecosystem, and how good they are at absorbing lots of crazy stuff into themselves. So, when a polluted environment is present, you don't want to be going and foraging for those mushrooms, for example.
Victorian health authorities issued a warning on April 23, 2015, about potentially fatal Death Cap mushrooms, which look like common straw mushrooms in the early stages.in the ACT attributed to the ingestion of death cap mushrooms since 2002, a fungus Mr Leonard says "attacks your major organs and once you've had enough of it, it's very difficult to do anything about counteracting".
"The main cause of people getting crook here — and this is not a deadly mushroom, but it could make you quite sick — is that they'll pick anthat looks just like supermarket one; it's got a white cap, it's got a white stem and you look at the gills underneath and they're a chocolate colour. He warns that the amount of psilocybin, the psychedelic compound produced by some fungi, can vary wildly between different species and individual mushrooms.
Foraging Fungi Eating Mushrooms Wild Mushrooms Mycology Sandra Tuszynska Queensland Mycological Society
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