Section One Mushrooms

Mushrooms and their relatives found growing on wood, or indeed underground, are the most exciting and diverse of our wild food resources.

Compared with vegetables and herbs they are generally more nutritious and have an astounding array of different forms, textures, smells and flavours. But, and this cannot be over emphasized, they are dangerous. There are many toxic ones: some tasting awful, some nice tasting that can cause serious gastric upset and of course there are those that can kill you. The rule has to be, if you are at all unsure, don’t! Those who have suffered by eating poisonous mushrooms have tended to be people who have gone at it rather bull-headedly sure that they knew what was what. Take no risks. Only have a go if you have thoroughly learnt about all the poisonous and edible species or if you have had your collections checked by a totally reliable expert.