Talk:Mushroom hunting

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 25 January 2021 and 30 April 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Jsalads.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 04:39, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

VfD

• Rules for mushroom hunting - Wikipedia is not guide to safety. If this article remains there must be a disclaimer at the top of this article. Mintguy 23:23, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)
  • IMO, this article mostly consists of warnings anyway, doesn't it? I don't see it telling you 'Do this'. Morven 00:03, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC)
  • Seeing as how most of the pages about edible mushrooms talk about how to identify and collect them (often with little respect for cautionary notes and similar species - I did my best to fix this in the past few days), I felt that it would be irresponsible to not put corresponding warnings. As an example, the Chanterelle page was talking about how there's no risk of misidentification and things of that sort - I'd like to see whoever wrote that after accidentally eating a Jack-O-Lantern mushroom. Seing as most professional mushroom hunters use a code of safety similar to the one I listed, it only seems responsible.
  • As an alternative that I could throw out there, I could make it instead an encylcopedia page about mushroom hunting or mushroom hunters in general. It's quite a serious topic that's been neglected. Rei 19:21, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)
    • An article on mushroom hunting would be good. It could include information about what people do, what experienced people recommend that people do, and what codes of safety are in fact used. However, I don't think articles should tell people what they should or should not do. It contradicts the spirit of the Neutral point of view policy. -- Oliver P. 01:22, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC)
  • There's too much good info in this article to just delete it. I agree that a general article on mushroom hunting would be best (and I certainly encourage Rei to work on it), but I'd rather have the current article than nothing at all. --Camembert 01:31, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC)
  • I changed it to a general purpose enyclopedia page on mushroom hunting, and covered other aspects of mushroom hunting. I also changed it to make it more of a neutral point of view presentation. Is this good? I think its more well rounded.  :) Rei 11:48, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Terminology

You don't "hunt" mushrooms, you go pick them. Besides, unless you like taking risks, there's not much adventure in regular mushroom picking. How about moving the package to "mushroom picking"? David.Monniaux 22:50, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Article should be renamed to Mushroom picking. Hunting is incorrect usage. --Cornellier (talk) 06:04, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

I agree. Looking at Google Trends: mushroom picking is the most common outside of USA, while picking mushrooms and pick mushrooms are the most popular globally. Wikipedia has a bias towards USA, especially in video games. Mega Drive which is the international and original name is a redirect, same goes for Kuri Kuri Mix. English Wikipedia really should be the global and independent of any country for articles and titles. This further leads to other languages using the US name over the local name, but that's another issue.

Liggliluff (talk) 18:52, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Wikibooks

This seems more like a manual and not an encyclopedia article. It should be moved to Wikibooks.

Webcaps?

What is a webcap? Is that a cortinarius? Please use latin name so that others could understand.

Thanks.

--PiKeeper 02:14, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Yup, webcaps are in the genus Cortinarius.

129.177.121.50 13:59, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Rule 11

Rule 11 says: Novices should start with more easily identifiable and less dangerous groups, such as boletes and bracket fungi, completely avoiding standard agarics. Is that sane advice since the edible Fistuline hepatica is easily confused with the very poisonous Hapalopilus rutilans? Of course, if he follows the earlier rules, especially the one which states only eat mushrooms you can positively identify, he's safe, but then we could say the same thing about agarics.

Michaelll

Protection

I think this page as well as all mushroom related articles should be protected or semi protected as flase information put on by vandals can be fatal for readers if not caught in time Pseudoanonymous 01:02, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

This is an interesting suggestion, and I am not opposed to it on principle. I am not sure however, whether how it would interface with the idea of no disclaimers besides the general ones. That idea is enumerated here [1]. I made the template:mycomorphbox and was told that my warning about using it as a guide for identifying mushrooms alone was in violation of the above guideline. My two cents. Debivort 02:16, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Why not both? First you don't want false information, second you don't want people using it as a real guide, but rather just reading it as an article. If it is good enough to be used as a guide it should be protected anyways because with a disclaimer people don't know what to trust; they can't tell which paragraph is vandalism and which ones are legitment. I generally oppose protecting pages on priciple, but not for these pages; because I don't want some kid reading it after it has been vandalised, then goes off to pick death caps to eat not knowing what a disclaimer was(we are lucky that hasn't happened so far). However such malicious vandalism has already happened, on the article about testing the spore print of mushroom [2]. Luckily someone caught that, but if this happens again someone could die; or at best we will lose credibility. I don't think that a disclaimer is going to be enough; we're not a tobacoo company so I think we should be more responsible than just some disclaimer. Pseudoanonymous 03:30, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, like I said, I am not opposed to protecting it or addding a disclaimer. But having been the recipient of critiques when I used a disclaimer myself, and not knowing how important these philosophical issues are, I don't have a strong opinion. Of course, it's all kind of moot since I don't have the administrative previleges anyways.

Wikipedia has a risk disclaimer, see Wikipedia:Risk disclaimer.--h i s s p a c e r e s e a r c h 13:23, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

It's because of that page that individual pages are not expected to have disclaimers or receive special attention because of potentially risky content - right? Debivort 18:55, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

It seems to me that if you have ever seen any vandalism on Wikipedia, which almost all of us have, then you should know better than to trust it enough to stake your life on any of its claims. Anyone impressionable enough to trust their life to Wikipedia should not be on the internet anyway. However, if/when this does ever become an issue, then I would like to pre-nominate this person for a Darwin Award.WesUGAdawg (talk) 00:38, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Is this true?

"Do not mix known edibles with other species while gathering. Keep them in separate containers. A single poisonous mushroom can poison a whole basket, if this occurs, throw everything."

• I haven't heard this before. Debivort 01:12, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

> I've heard it several times before, it's menioned on "Soppforeningen i Bergen" (Bergen mushroom society) webpage, google yields a few results, and it is also mentioned in several mushroom books I've read. mic 10:53, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

• • Huh.. Well, don't want to argue with sources, but I would guess this is an example of being conservative for the sake of liability. I mean, one can taste a small (i.e. 1mm by 1mm) piece of even the deadliest amanitas and not experience any problems, so unless you threw the amanita in and really shook it with the other mushrooms, I doubt it would poison them. That said ... people might throw them together and really shake them, so I am fine to leave this the way it is.

Wikipedia is not a how-to guide

Thus, the "rules" section is unencyclopedic. Instead of describing it in an encyclopedic summary style, it goes into indiscriminate detail.--h i s ^{s p a c e} _{r e s e a r c h} 12:57, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

It describes the mushroom picking process. I see nothing wrong. 99.236.221.124 (talk) 17:21, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Suggestions

Here's my thoughts on edits, major and minor, for this page:

"This is popular in most of Europe, including the Nordic, Baltic and Slavic countries and the Mediterranean Basin[citation needed]" -- Okay, in principle everything should be verifiable. However, I can imagine that it will be very hard to find a primary source on this. Do we really need a citation? Why is this tagged? It seems like "common knowledge" to me.

The section on identification should, I think, describe the two major ways mushrooms are identified: folkloric knowledge and identification using keys and micro- and macroscopic characteristics. I would like to see some detail on the process of mushroom identification. Is there a page in Wikiproject Fungi that already covers that information? If not, I think that would be a great thing to include here! I am not an expert on the folkloric knowledge, but I'm sure someone could add some information on how that is normally taught. I can add a section on identification of mushrooms using keys and morphologic characteristics.

"Only experts, however, collect from dangerous groups..." Not true. What is considered "easily identifiable" and "dangerous" is highly cultural. Amanita caesaria is commonly collected in Italy by non-experts with only folkloric knowledge - but the knowledge is plenty good enough to keep them safe in their area.

However, that brings me to one of the major changes: I propose that we move the mushroom hunting safety rules to Wikibooks. I have created an empty Wikibook Mushroom_Hunting for the purpose. Unless someone can offer a good reason why we should not do that, I think it should go into a Wikibook with a link over here, and a simple note which says something like, "Mushroom hunters often follow a set of safety rules to prevent poisonings." The safety rules could be replaced by a short section on the major risk behaviors: namely, hunting with inadequate knowledge and *especially* people that move from another part of the world and assume that the "rules" they learned as children will apply to the new fungal species.

Regional importance: Is mushroom hunting really all that much more popular along the Pacific coast? I ran into quite a few other hunters in Ohio, too!

I think we should add a section on environmental considerations in mushroom hunting. These vary by country - from the US, where the major threat to most species is habitat destruction, to the NL, where chanterelles have apparently been hunted to extinction and nearly everything that is edible or interesting is considered threatened. The comments about radioactivity, global warming, etc. can go here too.

The section on Russian edibles is great! I have been thinking about adding a similar section on Pacific Northwest edibles to the "Edible Mushroom" page. I think perhaps the solution is to make pages with regional lists of edible mushrooms. I propose moving the list at the bottom of this page to a page, "List of edible mushrooms in Russia" and creation of a page "List of edible mushrooms in the Pacific Northwest." These pages would then be linked off of both Edible_mushroom and Mushroom_hunting.

I will have some time in the next few days to make these kind of changes. Anyone have any thoughts before I start?Revdrace (talk) 15:45, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

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Rule 2

"Never try to convince anyone else to eat a mushroom that you have identified as poisonus." Shouldn't this be more like: "that you have not identified as safe" ? Carlw4514 (talk) 18:11, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Commonly gathered mushrooms?

Why are these two below under the "Commonly gathered mushrooms" list?

• Amanita phalloides (Бледная Поганка [Blednaya Poganka] - Pale Toadstool; The Death Cap)
• Amanita virosa (Мухомор Вонючий [Mukhomor Vonyuchiy] - Stinky Fly-Killer; The Destroying Angel)

Please provide a reson on why these lethal mushrooms are commonly gathered. Xufanc (talk) 22:48, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Interesting, but... (russian names)

why the Russian names? --jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 14:40, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Probably because I've merged 'Mushroom picking in Slavic culture' here and did a rather lousy job. ;) Zara1709 (talk) 14:42, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Is there any reason for the Russian still to be in this article at all? --jpgordon^{::==( o )} 17:53, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Looks like none, so I have removed them. I have, naturally, kept the common English names. In one case where no such name was given I kept the translation from the Russian name (Polish Mushroom)

Also removed a proverb: «There is a Russian proverb: "If you call yourself gruzd, then get into the basket," which encourages people who boast about themselves too much to actually do some work. Gruzd means a valuable mushroom.» As after removing the Russian name (Груздь, gruzd') it made no sense. But it still may be interesting, if some context is given, so I kept it here. - Nabla (talk) 09:10, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Cut or Dig?

It says:

Literature and picking guides also frequently offer reminders to always cut a mushroom with a blade when gathering, rather than pulling it out, and to avoid kicking or otherwise destroying mushrooms one does not want, to preserve the forest ecosystem.

However: You must dig up the base to look for a volva to rule out Amanitas in many cases —Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.116.36.48 (talk) 05:24, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

muscaria are fine if you boil them and throw away the water. Also you must drink vodka with them or you will puke. Didn't your grandmother teach you anything ;) 99.236.221.124 (talk) 17:24, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Don't forget to check the volva

It says:

Literature and picking guides also frequently offer reminders to always cut a mushroom with a blade when gathering, rather than pulling it out, and to avoid kicking or otherwise destroying mushrooms one does not want, to preserve the forest ecosystem.

However: You must dig up the base to look for a volva to rule out Amanitas in many cases —Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.116.36.48 (talk) 05:25, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Regional Importance

I am not sure that multiple paragraphs on the social etiquette of mushroom hunting in Spain are necessary. Though, I will concede it is interesting, it is unsourced and I am pretty sure it is original research from one contributor. Unless anyone has a reasonable objection, I propose deletion for these paragraphs. WesUGAdawg (talk) 00:12, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

"For example a picker's wife could be talking about her friends and how one of them was running late at a Seville-style dance class ("clase de sevillanas") since her husband had taken her car to go to Segovia. The picker, aware of his wife's friend's husband being a picker, may well decide to go out to a bar that night and discretely inquire about the suspect picker's activities to see if he shows reluctance to mention his trip to Segovia. Leads like this one will then be used to further investigate until a new source of mushrooms is eventually identified. It should be noted, however, that senior pickers often spread false leads to keep their counterparts second-guessing and expose their lack of investigative skills."

This sounds like someone just telling a story. Why does the story have to tell in such detail the type of dance class. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.220.35.164 (talk) 19:12, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

The whole section is non-encyclopedic and could be pared down to a few encyclopedic points. Who wants to break out the pruning knife? duff 20:04, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Mushrooms and animals

None of the WP mushroom articles seem to cover the relationship of animals to mushrooms. Which animals consume mushrooms? How do they know which ones are safe? How often do they make mistakes? What are the consequences? Dogs, cats, pets and mushrooms?

Which animals react to various mushrooms the most similar to humans? Can a human stranded in the wild get useful guidance about safe/edible mushrooms from observing animals?

A mushroom was nibbled at the edge by an animal. The next day, a chipmunk ate the whole thing. Did the chipmunk taste-test the mushroom first, wait a day for a bad reaction, then decide it was safe to consume?-96.237.78.13 (talk) 13:01, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

"In particular, Bellesrad claims that свинушка (Paxillus ssp.), масленок (Suillus ssp.), моховик (Xerocomus ssp.), and горькушка (Lactarius rufus) are the worst ones in this respect. The safest one is oпёнок oсенний (Armillaria mellea)."

The bolded words are unreadable by those who do not use cyrillic letters so therefore the persone who wrote the Radiation section of this article is asked to write the those words also using ordinary latin letters. The cited text is from section Radiation.yllbardh 16:00, 18 October 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Yllbardh (talk • contribs)

Portobello description

This article says "Another well known mushroom known as the portobello is a large brown strain of this fungus" (referring to Agaricus bisporus, without mentioning anything about the maturity stage of the mushroom), but the Agaricus bisporus article says that a "Portobello" is merely a mature specimen of Agaricus bisporus (without mentioning a strain or color). An old version of a now-deprecated Portobello mushroom article makes some reference to both strain and maturity. Can we clarify this, please? Does a "Portobello" need to be a particular brown strain of Agaricus bisporus? Does it need to be a mature specimen? —BarrelProof (talk) 16:57, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

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Mushroom hunting ecology

I cannot find any information related to the ecological aspects of mushroom hunting on mushroom biodiversity and aboundance, and it's effect on other forest species which are dependent on mushrooms. Couldn't find much info on the internet, except a research done in Switzerland with a less than adequate methodology.

Considering that mushroom picking is becoming a mainstream worldwide trend, I am worried that it could have negative effects. I am hoping that someone could shed some light on the subject so that, if it is of importance, it could be added to the article.

Thanks.77.139.189.226 (talk) 10:01, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

Student Editor

Hello everyone! I am a new student editor currently taking a course at Texas A&M University. I saw that this article needed some improvement, so I'll be editing this page over the next few weeks to complete my assignment. My goal is to shift the tone of the article to be more encyclopedic, as well as some reorganization if necessary to build a more coherent article. I'll be running my major changes through one of my sandboxes first, and moving them to this page when it feels finished, so feel free to check on that if you like!

I'd love to hear from any editor who has questions or comments about my contributions, or tips for a new editor! Thanks, Jsalads (talk) 20:50, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Reorganization

I've reorganized some paragraphs and renamed a section (Safety and Misidentification). I renamed in order to include the misidentification information as well as the "guidelines" to avoid seeming like a how-to. I also moved a paragraph about mushrooms that are popular to hunt and eat from the "Identifying mushrooms" section into the "Commonly gathered" section. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jsalads (talk • contribs) 17:56, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

Identifying Mushrooms/Safety and Misidentification

I rewrote most of the Identifying mushrooms section because it did not have an encyclopedic tone. I also decided to contribute my knowledge of the spore printing technique to identify mushrooms that are found. I rewrote some of the Commonly misidentified mushrooms content for clarity, mentioning the poisonous mushroom first before the edible lookalike each time. I also changed the tone to be more encyclopedic. I tagged one thing for clarification in the little brown mushroom subheading, and the rest I edited for encyclopedic tone as well. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jsalads (talk • contribs) 22:56, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

Commonly gathered mushrooms and Regional Importance

In both of these sections, I rewrote sentences to maximize clarity and removed argumentative statements. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jsalads (talk • contribs) 01:27, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

Where to find

Where to find mushrooms in st. Louis 2600:1700:69C0:B80:E4C8:B1AE:8B98:E39A (talk) 07:56, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

Historical and ancient practices are always interesting.

There's a lot of old myth and legend around mushrooms and mushroom hunting. For example, the connection with the moon and lunar cycles. There's a lot of focus on identifying mushrooms in this article, which is praxis not -doxy. Most of it should be removed, really. Encyclopedias exist to say what, not how. Adding info actually about mushroom hunting, rather than how to do it and identifying mushrooms, would greatly improve things here. Heavy Chaos (talk) 23:00, 30 January 2023 (UTC)