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AqueousAlkaloid
Biologist


Registered: 07/19/16
Posts: 9
Loc: Oklahoma, USA
Last seen: 7 years, 5 months
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Chlorophyllum molybdites poisoning by experienced hunter 3
#23455058 - 07/19/16 05:41 AM (7 years, 6 months ago) |
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I am new to Shroomery so let me start with a little background:
I am a fairly experienced mushroom hunter who has been gathering morel's in the spring and Agaricus sp. all summer long here in Oklahoma. I have a master's degree in conservation and a background in zoology and botany. I am not the smartest person in the world, but I am knowledgeable in the approach to species identification and understand the scientific language needed to facilitate ID.
I own a small acreage a few miles outside Oklahoma City consisting of mature, old growth mixed oak with scattered small meadows throughout. The periodically heavy rainfall this summer has lead to a large bounty of delicious Agaricus campestris, Agaricus silvicola, and Agaricus arvensis! Since mid June my wife and I have been harvesting and eating lovely meals with these little gems.
Here are a couple pics of the Agaricus sp. we have been finding.

After a beautiful month of enjoying the bounty of our property something terribly predictable happened I am afraid....my hubris became too big and like Icarus, I crashed back to earth and learned an extremely painful and powerful lesson.
This is the first year my new friend Chlorophyllum molybdites has made an appearance on my property and frankly, I should have expected it.
The big problem was this, I picked these toxic scoundrel's when they were in the button phase and for whatever environmental reason, the cap of these false parasol mushrooms were extremely smooth as buttons without the typical scales present throughout the fruiting bodies life. Also, the buttons were appearing in a meadow, about 20 yards from some of the Agaricus campestris I had been harvesting. Personally, I thought they were Agaricus arvensis buttons. Here is a pic of the buttons.

I left these specific buttons pictured planning on harvesting later, and picked 3 buttons just to the right of the photograph to eat.
That evening I made a delicious homemade chicken fried steak meal with potatoes and sauteed wild mushrooms. (POISON MUSHROOMS!) The meal was immaculate! The false parasol mushrooms truly tasted divine. I have read many experiences with this mushroom and the consensus seems to be that they taste great. Unfortunately, what was to follow was truly hell on earth...
We finished our dinner at 7:30PM and went to bed around 10PM starting to feel a tiny bit uneasy. My wife has a particularly strong stomach so when she shot out of bed at 10:30 to exclaim "I am going to be sick!" and ran to the bathroom to vomit her guts up, I became acutely aware that I too was feeling extremely nauseated. I wont go into too much detail but suffice it to say that the next 4 hours consisted of violent purging from both ends about every 10 minutes. This was also combined with extreme sweating, chills, low blood pressure, and painful stomach cramps. We both lost at least 2 gallons of water over those 4 hours and became extremely dehydrated and weak. My family lives in the area so I called my mother to come over at 2AM to see if she needed to drive us to the ER. She brought lots of gatorade and some immodium. In the end we decided not to go to the hospital. After about 3AM we would tell the effects were subsiding and we were able to keep down all the fluid we were drinking. I was 100% positive we had not eaten an Amanita sp. so I knew the night would be rough but our liver and kidneys would survive.
The next morning I went out to identify the culprits that had matured overnight. Here are the pics.

Good ol' green gills in the flesh!
Learn from my mistake. Your hubris can get you poisoned!
-------------------- GIVE ME KNOWLEDGE OR GIVE ME DEATH!
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doctorghosty
is the name of me



Registered: 09/02/10
Posts: 11,420
Loc: North GA, God's fav
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Re: Chlorophyllum molybdites poisoning by experienced hunter [Re: AqueousAlkaloid]
#23455159 - 07/19/16 06:57 AM (7 years, 6 months ago) |
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This happened to me as an uber-noob and instantly made me a lot more serious about what I was doing.
You really cannot overstate how awful the experience is, I still remember it as one of the very worst nights of my life.
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AqueousAlkaloid
Biologist



Registered: 07/19/16
Posts: 9
Loc: Oklahoma, USA
Last seen: 7 years, 5 months
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Re: Chlorophyllum molybdites poisoning by experienced hunter [Re: doctorghosty]
#23455195 - 07/19/16 07:22 AM (7 years, 6 months ago) |
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Yes, one of the very worst nights of my life. I remember apologizing to my wife over and over as we kept leaking and heaving in agony. For whatever reason, body chemistry, stomach pH, I seemed to get more sick than she did. As you said, I can't stress enough how horrible the experience is. You will wish you were dead! Aside from the amatoxin containing species and deadly false morels, I would imagine ranking the false parasol just below those fatal species in terms severity of effects.
Lesson learned. Ego collapsed. Hubris gone. Respect, knowledge, and humility gained. Mushroom maturity and spore prints are truly essential for avoiding experiences like this!
-------------------- GIVE ME KNOWLEDGE OR GIVE ME DEATH!
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Psychedelic Pupil
Goober



Registered: 09/27/12
Posts: 744
Loc: The bright side of life
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Re: Chlorophyllum molybdites poisoning by experienced hunter [Re: doctorghosty]
#23455200 - 07/19/16 07:23 AM (7 years, 6 months ago) |
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Thankfully it was mistake you get to live to never make again! That's some scary shit! Thank you for sharing your story. This is the type of cautionary tale I enjoy hearing because I never want to get too comfortable harvesting mushrooms that I make a mistake like this! I know it's very easy to do. I've been fortunate so far with my foraging but not because I'm so experienced. Because I was lucky in that some Agaricus arvensis that I ate without proper identification was, in fact, Agaricus arvensis and not something poisonous.
-------------------- I'd like to think I'm smart enough to realize how much knowledge I don't have.
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Thayendanegea
quiet walker



Registered: 02/20/12
Posts: 7,596
Loc: 7 Lodges Nation
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Re: Chlorophyllum molybdites poisoning by experienced hunter [Re: AqueousAlkaloid]
#23455561 - 07/19/16 09:51 AM (7 years, 6 months ago) |
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Thank you for taking the time to post here. This is very good to know as I always heard that the Chlorophyllum molybdites were poisonous but it's nice to see an actual example. Bet you won't make that mistake again.
-------------------- Look Deep Into Nature,and Then You Will Understand Everything Better. Albert Einstein
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Matai


Registered: 05/04/14
Posts: 1,016
Loc: NZ
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Re: Chlorophyllum molybdites poisoning by experienced hunter [Re: Thayendanegea]
#23456461 - 07/19/16 02:39 PM (7 years, 6 months ago) |
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Thanks for posting. I've always heard that you won't die from C. molybdites, but you'll wish you had I'm really glad you're both OK now.
Here's a very sobering but good read written by somebody who ate a deadly Amanita (and survived) when the mushrooms were too young to properly ID. It's good to keep stories like this one and the OP's one in the back of your head when you're hunting and eating wild mushrooms.
-------------------- All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream
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