Foraging and poisons

[ateallthepies]

I have been getting into foraging the last few years and am gradually gaining experience of what is good to eat with the help of several books like food for free.

However one question I have not found an answer to is are there any plants, fruits or fungi that can harm us just by touching them or say if you cut into them with a knife then wipe the blade and use it for food prep?

I know the Amanita family of fungi can be deadly and the water dropworts and other plants are killers but am unsure how much contact is needed to harm us or if we actually need to ingest some to cause harm?

Also with regard to identifying British edibles and their poisonous lookalikes , can the members here recommend me a good complete field guide with photos or will I have to buy a guide to each sort of fruit, nut, fungi or plant?

Thanks,

Steve.

 

[ged]

In the UK there are many things like plant saps that can cause unpleasant skin reactions, sometimes more noticeable in bright sunlight, but unless you have an allergy you aren't going to be seriously harmed by a relatively small amount of contact. Even if you diced a 'destroying angel' and then used the same knife to prep your next meal you'd probably notice no ill effects. I can't say I'd recommend it, and I keep a separate knife for food, but you'd have negligible (microgramme) quantities of toxins on the blade. To be poisoned you would have to ingest an appreciable quantity (grammes) of the plant, which would be several milligrammes of the most active toxin.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanita_phalloides#Toxicity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amatoxin#Clinical_symptoms

I have a few field guides but they all seem to have as many failings as things that recommend them, so I'll be as interested as you are in responses to that question.

 

[ateallthepies]

Thanks for those links. I have read them before and is partly why I was wondering about contact issues. It seemed 'authorities' warn against putting these fungi in the same basket even as edibles but then says eating about half a death cap is enough to kill?

I believe there aren't many things that can easily kill in the UK. Apart from the death cap, destroying angel, hemlock and the water drop worts, yew and deadly nightshade etc but would like to be able to easily know and identify the ones that could and thus avoid.

I have been told or even read on this forum that it may not even be worth foraging for the white flowered umbellifers with too much risk of accidental miss-identification?

Steve.

 

[Geoff Dann]

I know the Amanita family of fungi can be deadly and the water dropworts and other plants are killers but am unsure how much contact is needed to harm us or if we actually need to ingest some to cause harm?

Just touching them won't get you into trouble, but ingesting even a small part of the flesh of the deadly Amanitas can put you in hospital. Part of the reason they are so toxic is that the poisons do not get filtered out of your body by the kidneys. Instead, the kidneys are damaged by the toxins, which are re-absorbed to go around and do more harm to your liver and kidneys.

Also with regard to identifying British edibles and their poisonous lookalikes , can the members here recommend me a good complete field guide with photos or will I have to buy a guide to each sort of fruit, nut, fungi or plant?

Regarding fungi, you'll need a complete field guide with photos. Two or three would be helpful. Start with Roger Phillips and Michael Jordan's books.

 

[ged]

Thanks for those links. I have read them before and is partly why I was wondering about contact issues. It seemed 'authorities' warn against putting these fungi in the same basket even as edibles but then says eating about half a death cap is enough to kill?

Well in my view putting something which is both crumbly and deadly poisonous in the same container as some unpackaged foodstuffs would have to raise questions.

I believe there aren't many things that can easily kill in the UK. Apart from the death cap, destroying angel, hemlock and the water drop worts, yew and deadly nightshade etc but would like to be able to easily know and identify the ones that could and thus avoid.

You've obviously looked into it enough to know the main dangers. Most of the non-fungi dangers are pretty easily identified and there isn't much that you'd want to eat that looks like them, but fungi are a bit different because there are so many of them, and they often seem to grow very irregularly, and edible ones and poisonous ones are sometimes superficially very similar. You often see one that's not easily identified because it doesn't look like the text book version for some reason. Sometimes the books get it wrong too; a French friend has a book showing an edible mushroom and a very similar but poisonous mushroom. The captions in the book are the wrong way round!

I have been told or even read on this forum that it may not even be worth foraging for the white flowered umbellifers with too much risk of accidental miss-identification?

I think the sensible advice has always been if you can't identify it with certainty, leave it alone. There are a few that are easy to ID and so are safe bets, but I just don't forage for any kind of mushrooms at all. They seem to me to be more flavour than substance, and as I think I said, I've never liked most of them anyway, so I suppose I'm fortunate that way.