Mushroom Class Keeps Hunters Safe Botanist Guides Enthusiasts To Edible Varieties

Munching mushrooms from the forest floor can be a little like playing Russian roulette.

A mushroom that looks edible can send you rushing to a restroom, or worse, kill you.

“If you are going to experiment with mushrooms, don’t eat them all. Save a couple so we know what killed you,” said a half-joking Dr. Edmund Tylutki.

He’s an expert in mushroom identification and professor emeritus of botany at the University of Idaho. On Saturday, Tylutki imparted words of wisdom to 36 novice mushroom hunters gathered at the university’s Clark Fork Field Campus.

The class is offered every year and fills quickly. Some mushroom enthusiasts had to be turned away. Mushrooming is popular this time of year, and the wet spring spawned a bumper crop. About 200 species of mushrooms grow around the campus itself.

With picnic baskets and wax paper in hand, Tylutki led the group through the damp woods to forage for fungi. The idea, he said, is to teach people the differences among some of the thousands of edible and poisonous mushrooms that thrive in Northwest forests.

“Mushroom hunting is a risky hobby unless you invest some time and are certain you can recognize what’s edible,” Tylutki said. “You can’t take this flippantly.”

Al Krebs is an oyster mushroom farmer. He grows them at his Bonner County home, and sells them to restaurants. Krebs signed up for the class because he knows little about the fungi that grow wild.

“I’ve always wanted to go pick the wild ones but didn’t want to get sick,” he said.

“I want a little more knowledge before I go out. I’m very careful. I don’t get too stupid about this stuff.”

Pat Allen lives in Kootenai County and has a piece of property loaded with mushrooms.

He decided it was wise to take Tylutki’s class before plucking a few for the dinner table.

“I would like to eat some but I’m not sure what’s good or what’s poisonous,” Allen said.

“I’m sure of a couple but I wanted to learn more,” added Marilyn Felten, who worked part time for the U.S. Forest Service. She usually hunts for puffball or coral mushrooms.

Tylutki said the puffball has a lookalike that makes people very ill. The treatment usually given for mushroom poisoning also aggravates the symptoms for someone who’s nibbled a phony puffball fungus.

While in the woods in McCall, Idaho, Tylutki was summoned by a Forest Service worker. He had an emergency call from a physician trying to treat someone who ate what was believed to be a harmless puffball.

“It’s not an easy job to identify a mushroom. A lot of them have not even been tested,” he said. “We have names and descriptions, but no one has gone on to eat them. We tend to find out about them by mistake, by someone who erroneously eats one.”

About 10 to 15 percent of the mushrooms growing in the Northwest are unknown species, he said.

The popular morel mushroom isn’t always safe either. Five to 10 percent of people get ill after eating it, and it should never be eaten raw, said Tylutki, who has written a series of mushroom guidebooks.

After collecting specimens Saturday, the class identified them by smell, looks and the color of spores shaken onto a piece of paper. Some were tested by dropping iodine on the fleshy fungus and, of course, there was tasting. Bits of the mushrooms were rolled around the mouth and spit out, not swallowed.

By the end of the class, most students know and recognize the 10 most common edible mushrooms and the 10 most deadly. Sometimes the class actually discourages people from foraging for wild mushrooms because of the potential danger.

“I try to provide enough information to help them stay out of trouble,” Tylutki said.

, DataTimes