Due to the time of the year and the heavy rain this year, the forests here are full of mushrooms/toadstools/svamp and this has brought out the mushroom pickers.

There is a lot of forest here and even with a large proportion of the population out picking mushrooms the chances of seeing anyone else are slim.

Obviously, if there are other folk around the less chance you have of finding the “good ones”!

Families frequently know “good spots” where they will always find plenty of mushrooms but these locations are a strict family secret.

I was talking to a lady the other day and she said her husband and daughter were out in the forest with a GPS and they were logging all their best places.

Modern technology applied to mushroom  picking!

Having said that a GPS is definitely an asset as it is so easy to become disorientated and lost in the forest.

Most people cannot afford a GPS so it is a good idea to carry a  cell/ mobile phone as the emergency services can track you if necessary.

My wife and I are definitely novices at this. We know the the chanterelle as that is easy to identify, and nice to eat, but they are hard to find so we decided to teach ourselves a bit more and pick other types of mushrooms.

Deciding to join in we have been out in the forest and picked all sorts of mushrooms and taken them back to the house where we spread them all out and with reference book in hand, with pictures of course, we attempt to identify what we have picked.

We have noticed that some non -poisonous ones are very similar to poisonous ones. These we throw out – just in case.

We have managed to identify, and eat (delicious) about five different types now so we are progressing.

However, we received a word of warning this week as woman, over on the west coast, died from poisoning by Death Cap Mushroom. That is by total kidney/liver failure.

We couldn’t really understand why as people are usually quite careful but it now seems that the lady concerned was from Thailand, and was here visiting her daughter. How sad is that?

Portrait of a Death Cap

POISON: Ingestion of death caps account for as many as 90 percent of mushroom poisoning deaths worldwide.

TREATMENT

There is no known cure for Death Cap poisoning.

The moral of this story is enjoy your expedition into the forest but don’t get lost and be careful what you eat!