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OfflineHumility
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How is a newly discovered species tested for edibility?
    #13662857 - 12/20/10 09:13 PM (13 years, 1 month ago)

Hey everyone; sorry if this is an oft-asked question; I looked around under a couple different phrasings and couldn't find anything.

Basic idea:

When a new fungus is discovered and cataloged for the first time, how do we determine its edibility?  I'm asking because wikipedia has this "Hydnellum Peckii" this on the english start page and it looks so crazy.  I can see why people would and wouldn't want to eat that; but it's listed as inedibile, so how do we determine that?

Obviously sometimes the texture or flavor may be displeasurable (to a wide variety of people/most people), while in other cases, the fruits may be poisonous.  Either way, how do we come to this conclusion?

One pic for good measure:


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OfflineJoie
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Re: How is a newly discovered species tested for edibility? [Re: Humility]
    #13662970 - 12/20/10 09:37 PM (13 years, 1 month ago)

When someone eats it and doesn't die or get ill.  According to Roger Phillips H. peckii is on the Red List anyway so best not to eat it.


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OfflineLuckOfTheFryish
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Re: How is a newly discovered species tested for edibility? [Re: Joie]
    #13662976 - 12/20/10 09:38 PM (13 years, 1 month ago)

chemical tests can sometimes help too. or if closely related species are known to contain toxins its best to just stay away.


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InvisiblePinback
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Re: How is a newly discovered species tested for edibility? [Re: Humility]
    #13664250 - 12/21/10 04:51 AM (13 years, 1 month ago)

Specifically regarding H. peckii, it has a texture similar to cork and I doubt it would be possible to even chew it.


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OfflineToxicManM
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Re: How is a newly discovered species tested for edibility? [Re: Humility] * 1
    #13664815 - 12/21/10 09:49 AM (13 years, 1 month ago)

If you're interested in doing that sort of thing scientifically, there's a fairly involved process.

First, you have to come up with a good collection of the species to be sampled. Note that this means a good botanic collection - the specimens must all come from the same spot, such that we can be certain that they are all part of the same organism. Specimens from nearby that you're sure are the same thing are not an acceptable part of such a collection.

Next, get a professional mycologist to identify the collection and agree that it's what you want to be sampling. While this doesn't apply as much to something like Hydnellum peckii, there are other mushrooms that you'll need a professional to ID if you want to know what they are at all.

Before you bother to try eating them, a search should be done of the literature to find out if somebody else has already done it. In particular, you want to know if there are any reported poisonings from the species. It's usually not a good idea to try eating a known poisonous mushroom.

Part of the collection needs to be placed in a registered mycological herbarium, so that the ID of the collection can be verified by any interested researchers in the future. The professional identifier may have correctly identified them as far as current knowledge goes, but 10 years from now research may show that what you had was actually a distinct species from what it was thought to be when you ate it.

Finally, you get to cook and eat some of the collection. For initial sampling the amount eaten should be less than 1/8 of a teaspoon. For most mushroom species, waiting overnight is sufficient to decide if you're going to be sick. With Cortinarius you have to wait and watch for 2 weeks.

And, of course, if you want it to be official, you need to publish your findings. Unless your species is in some way really noteworthy, about the only thing most of the world will be interested in will be if it turns out to be poisonous. Then they'll want to know the symptoms and severity of the poisoning.



All of that is the "official" way it's supposed to be done.

In real life, random people eat everything in sight, and some of them get poisoned and end up in the emergency room. When we get lucky, they've saved some uncooked specimens that can be examined and identified. Then they can be added to the "don't eat these" list.

Edible species filter around mostly by word of mouth. It's far more likely that a new poisonous species will be found than a new choice edible one. After all, probably everything in the forest has been eaten by somebody at some point. The main reason that a new edible species is found is that the new species was thought to be something else and was only recently determined to be a new species. So anything that's not on the list now is not likely to be worth eating. Most mushrooms out there are inedible or not worth the effort to pick and eat.

When new poisonous species are found, it's usually because nobody ever had specimens that could be identified after they were poisoned. In some cases, it's because they are particularly difficult to identify. In the case of the deadly Cortinarius species, they weren't named as being poisonous because of the extremely long latent period after ingestion. It can take 2 weeks before any symptoms appear (then your kidneys fail), so there were probably unrecognized poisonings in the past. They were noticed when hundreds of people ate them at the same time and became ill.

Happy mushrooming!


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Offlinepsylosymonreturns
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Re: How is a newly discovered species tested for edibility? [Re: ToxicMan]
    #13664866 - 12/21/10 10:03 AM (13 years, 1 month ago)

thank you so much for the great read toxic man!! :smile:

it seems likely 99% of choice edibles are already known. :thumbup:


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Offlineeniac
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Re: How is a newly discovered species tested for edibility? [Re: psylosymonreturns]
    #13664875 - 12/21/10 10:05 AM (13 years, 1 month ago)

Is it valid to test edibility using rats/mice?
Or are some fungi only dangerous to certain species, i.e humans?


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Offlinepsylosymonreturns
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Re: How is a newly discovered species tested for edibility? [Re: eniac]
    #13664883 - 12/21/10 10:08 AM (13 years, 1 month ago)

i beleive many species that are poisonous to us are not to other animals and i remember reading in an old book that judging if a species is poisonous by seeing if other animals eat it is not a safe practice! :lol:


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Offlineeniac
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Re: How is a newly discovered species tested for edibility? [Re: psylosymonreturns]
    #13664886 - 12/21/10 10:09 AM (13 years, 1 month ago)

So if it kills your mouse, it's deadly, but if the mouse lives it can still be deadly to humans?
Feh.


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Offlinepsylosymonreturns
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Re: How is a newly discovered species tested for edibility? [Re: eniac]
    #13664910 - 12/21/10 10:15 AM (13 years, 1 month ago)

deadly, poisonous and inedible are different things i think. it may be edible to a mouse but it could make your ass piss like fire house.


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OfflineHarryL
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Re: How is a newly discovered species tested for edibility? [Re: psylosymonreturns]
    #13665028 - 12/21/10 10:38 AM (13 years, 1 month ago)

It would depend on the toxin in the mushroom, whether a mouse or rat would be a good model for human exposure. For an unknown toxin, I would say no, its not a good idea to base anything on animal models. If you know the toxin, then you could determine if the animal model will give you some valid information on toxicity. For instance, mice do not have a receptor for diphtheria toxin, so levels that will kill humans a hundred times over don't affect mice...

This is the reason why its a bad old wives tale that you can eat berries bird eat or other such nonsense...

With that said, I have seen some pretty stoned cows in mushroom fields, and have seen some very drunk birds eating old fermented berries...


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OfflineHumility
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Re: How is a newly discovered species tested for edibility? [Re: ToxicMan]
    #13668587 - 12/21/10 10:53 PM (13 years, 1 month ago)

Quote:

Finally, you get to cook and eat some of the collection. For initial sampling the amount eaten should be less than 1/8 of a teaspoon. For most mushroom species, waiting overnight is sufficient to decide if you're going to be sick. With Cortinarius you have to wait and watch for 2 week




That was what I *thought* might be the case; it makes the most sense.  Eat a tiny sample (1/8th teaspoon sounds great, maybe 20-50mg?) and wait for a bit.

Do you know what the most toxic known mushroom species are?  Have any clue of how much material a destroying angel or deathcap could irreparably damage a human being (liver kidneys etc., not necessarily death; "permanent consequences" so to speak)?  Would it be less than an 8th a teaspoon or so?

Thanks for the wealth of information man.

One more thing worth mentioning: you make it sound like we aren't finding new fungus, specifically basidiocarp "mushrooms" out there.  I'm completely ignorant on the subject.  Is this the case?  Are mushrooms more like large animals than small insects in terms of finding new groups of species?


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OfflineToxicManM
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Re: How is a newly discovered species tested for edibility? [Re: Humility]
    #13669948 - 12/22/10 10:35 AM (13 years, 1 month ago)

Naming a most toxic mushroom species is difficult for several reasons.

Usually the main consideration is lethality. Almost all fatal mushroom poisonings are due to amatoxins. There are a lot of species out there with dangerous levels of amatoxins. If you look only at which ones actually end up poisoning people, the deadly Amanitas have to be the ones. They are large, have high levels of amatoxins, apparently look good to eat, and reportedly taste good. Galerinas mostly show up when people are hunting psychedelic mushrooms and misidentify their finds. Lepiotas usually are a result of somebody without much identifying skill eating all of the edible looking mushrooms they find.

There are plenty of normally nonlethal toxin mushrooms out there that have really high levels of toxins. Muscarine, in particular, is in lots of mushrooms. While muscarine almost never kills anybody, once in a long while somebody will eat a bunch of something with a lot of muscarine and manage to kill themselves.

Lethality is also dependent on things like the size, age, and health of the victim, and the availability of medical treatment.

The levels of toxins in different collections can vary by large amounts. There have been collections of Amanita phalloides made that had no detectable amatoxins. Typically, eating a single cap of that species is enough to be potentially lethal (depending on size, of course).


As far as chronic (permanent) damage, there have not been any studies of it, to my knowledge. It would need to be an epidemiological study, following the test population for a long time, and it would require a lot of funding. Especially these days I don't see that kind of funding becoming available. It also doesn't help that the test population for such a study is so small.

As far as chronic damage from tiny (symptomless) doses of toxins, it seems likely that it is negligible. Amatoxins occur in tiny amounts in lots of edible mushrooms, including Boletus edulis, probably the most popular edible mushroom in the world.



Actually, we find new species all the time, especially outside Europe. In Europe it's pretty unusual to find a truly new species. Here in Colorado, I've found several. The hard part is figuring out if it really is a new species, or just something with almost no published information on it.

Alexander Smith used to estimate that we'd probably found about a third of the total species to be found here. He died back in the mid 80's. If we use his estimate as a basis, we're probably at about the halfway point now.

BTW, most "new" species are already known to science. The new part is that they've never been recorded anywhere near the new location. I find 5 or 10 species a year like that. That's also important information.

Happy mushrooming!


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OfflineHarryL
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Re: How is a newly discovered species tested for edibility? [Re: ToxicMan]
    #13670500 - 12/22/10 12:46 PM (13 years, 1 month ago)

Great post Toxic

I would agree, there are more fungus to be discovered... not a whole not of research dollars in it...

I would also wonder if there are some cross breeding that is making new strains... perhaps not species but...


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OfflineBothHands
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Re: How is a newly discovered species tested for edibility? [Re: Humility]
    #13670507 - 12/22/10 12:47 PM (13 years, 1 month ago)

Woww, that looks tastey as hell.  Like a strawberry jelly filled mushroom.


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OfflineHarryL
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Re: How is a newly discovered species tested for edibility? [Re: BothHands]
    #13670964 - 12/22/10 02:23 PM (13 years, 1 month ago)

might be some fungus on fungus action there... the strawberry fungus meets the yogurt fungus


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OfflineToxicManM
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Re: How is a newly discovered species tested for edibility? [Re: HarryL]
    #13675263 - 12/23/10 11:08 AM (13 years, 1 month ago)

BothHands, they're pretty, but the texture is like wood. Definitely inedible. I've heard of somebody trying to eat one anyway, and the taste was described as burning.

HarryL, that's just what they look like in the woods when you find 'em. They need to be fresh, and there needs to be some moisture around, but there's nothing unusual going on there. The common name for them is Strawberries and Cream.

Happy mushrooming!


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