This is a little off subject but does anyone know of a source for wild mushroom identification? I have tried to study the subject through books but had very little success. Is there anywhere I could go to learn how to identify and pick wild mushrooms for table fare?
I have often observed this overlooked food source while outside hunting and have always wanted to be able safely harvest this wild fungi. Any help in regards to this matter would be greatly appreciated.

try the ones that grow on cow patties... THEY'RE AWSOME!!!!

Ok, just in case you didn't know, i was just joking... you need to leave those alone unless you wanna take a trip and never leave the farm!

Oh, yeah my favorite!!!!

Texas Mycological society. Many years back, I attended a two day class and expedition near Lufkin. Very informative.

texasmushrooms.org

I think

Google it.

Yeah, them cow patty mushrooms are pretty good.

Mushrooms. hehehehe.. He said mushrooms..

Not much help but I thought it was funny.

Sorry Dude. Heh.

Very good question! I see all kinds of mushrooms after a good rain and most are probably edible. The books are not good enough. The websites want to sell you something. There has to be a society here in Texas that has expeditions and pros to point out the good and the bad. Until I have a pro who knows what he or she is talking about, I'm leaving them alone. You would not want your entire family tripping on the magic mushrooms the Indians used to eat. Plus, those will get you thrown in the pokey!

LUNCH

I watched a TV program that said there was 200 different Mushrooms in N. America. BUT only 80 of them were NON-poisenist (sp)

Better to spend the $ and get the ones that are safe to eat then kill your whole family!!!!!

I used to pick the magic variety back during my college days in East Texas. I don't think that there would be any problem in identifying them to this day. I am not looking to get "high" just wanting to learn how to harvest these great tasting fungi safely. I tried texasmushrooms.org and Texas Mycological Society but they were no help on the wild varieties any other source of information would be greatly appreciated.

Google is not much help with southeast Texas mushrooms. I don't give a crap about anything north of I-10! There are groups of people who actually go "shrooming" and they do not want you to know! Kinda like hunting public waters! Google has all you need to know about buying kits and the magic mushrooms which I have never experienced. After reading about what ever that word is they make it sound harmless. I'm too damn old to experiment. I got a family to raise. But, I do have an interest in knowing what is edible and wild. Cool topic and how cool would it be to cook up some duck, goose, dove or quail with mushrooms you picked yourself. By the way, I know where I could get grocery sacks full of the magic variety. I'm too much of a puss to risk my CHL or coach's license for someone else and I would never disclose the location. It is where many 1000's of people hunt every year. So I am sure there are people farming that crop as well. Playing with fire will get you burned.

Time for some shroom tea!!!!

Bob, i had the very same question come to mind as I was driving back from east Texas the other day. With the cool weather coming and the rain, they will be popping up everywhere in the woods.

There is a website I found a couple of years ago which I will have to re-find it, that had tons of very good information. This section was specifically geared toward the non-psychoactive varieties. It's going to take a bit of digging because a quick google with keywords "identifying edible mushrooms" brought up some decent info but not the site I was looking for. I did find this interesting video apparently made in the UK, but if we could find some like this for our area, it would be almost as good as going with someone in person. http://www.5min.com/Video/How-to-Identify-Wild-Edible-Mushrooms-151475013

The general consensus from all I've read about it is if you don't know, either leave them alone, or go with someone who does know which ones are safe. Where do you live?
Maybe we can pool our research and come up with a solution to learning this craft. I think I've even seen local area forums about wild edible ones but a lot of those are dedicated to the magical ones which I'm not interested in at this stage of my life. Peyote now, that'd be a different story !
just kidding LOL.

The web site I mentioned had a lot of really knowledgeable people posting there and If you take some good quality pictures along with the prescribed list of answers to certain questions, and then make something called a spore print (or something sounding similar) and post them, they will ID it for you. The spore print is a big white sheet of paper, posterboard or aluminum foil, and if I remember right, you lay the mushroom on it for a certain amount of time and then lift it up and take a picture of the pattern of the spores. Supposedly a major thing about IDing some varieties that look alike but aren't. I know some of them are deadly and others at the very least make you very sick and can leave you with a very severely damaged liver. So, I've always been scaired to mess with it but the lure is still there and I still have a strong desire to learn how to do it...safely.

Jon,
I live in Irving so we aren't that far away from each other. I have wanted to be able to do this for years but have never been able to find anyone who could help me get started. I was hoping that by addressing it here some sportsman with knowledge in this area might help. It looks like this is a lost art and very few if any one will be willing or able to teach me this skill. Wish I could locate the people that sponsored the two day outing that 30 Pack said he attended but he did not provide that contact information.

I don't have the contact info handy right now, but I will get it for you in the next few days. I swear it was the texas mycological society, but I could be wrong. Attending the class was set up by my mother, and I just accompanied her because she didn't want to drive from Houston to Lufkin alone. She will have the info i'm sure.

It was a half day class/seminar, and the the next day was an expedition in the Angelina National Forest with the guide overseeing a wild mushroom harvest. Initially I did not even want to attend, but ended up enjoying it very much.

Check back in a couple days.

BB, I have not been able to locate yet the web site I had mentioned earlier. I'm still looking. In the absence of that one though, i ran across one that seems to be 95% geared towards the "active" as they refer to them, varieties. But, those guys apparently take their mushrooms very seriously and have lots and lots of good ID'ing info on their Mushroom Hunting & Identification Forum. I went ahead and registered just to have access for posting the ID requests. This page this link has a general synopsis of how the ID request thing works and some other info about their forum.

If you can get past the obvious nature of the place there is really some very good ID information to be found there, and the "similar threads" found at the bottom of each thread topic proved very interesting to track through.

I will continue to hunt for the forum I'd found a couple years ago that I sure do believe had a group page specifically of members from our immediate area.

In the meantime, what would you think of working on a joint venture to compile a list of the known mushroom species found in our area of Texas that are edible, tasty, and of the non-"active" varieties. Maybe a data base of some sort that could contain links to Descriptions, typical habitat, Pictures, ID characteristics, cooking/eating tips, etc.??

Such thing may already exist and if so, that would be a start.

Here's a decent article

http://mdc.mo.gov/nathis/mushrooms/mushroom/index.htm

I got a little interested in this a while back.
Seems spring, after a wet winter, is considered
best hunting time.
Be careful, some of those things will
kill you until you are dead.

We call the ones that kill you. The ones you can only eat once. Here is a book http://www.amazon.com/Texas-Mushrooms-Field-Corrie-Herring/dp/0292751265

It is a huge pastime in Eastern Europe, so I am working on the Texas table fare now. My wife likes to hunt them, since she is from the Ukraine.

Here's a link you could study for a lifetime. The interesting fact is some of the poisonous varieties take days to destroy your liver and they look like the expensive Chanterelles. The death cap does not even look good to eat. The other thing I picked up was the poinsonous varieties will many times smell bad. So, before you eat them take a good wiff. Here's the link...

http://americanmushrooms.com/toxicms.htm