Item — HN Reader

Long years ago, my high school biology teacher (master's degree in biology, decades of experience hunting mushrooms) nearly killed herself - by accident, eating wild mushrooms.

Like many teens, I was pretty stupid about risks. But that convinced me that "never, ever eat wild mushrooms" was the only sane way to go.

1 comments

I really appreciate hearing the details of stories like this, IE: what did she think she had found, how familiar was she with the species, what was it that caused her to misidentify, etc. Helps us all out when we can learn from each other - one of the things I really like about talking to other mushroom people is there willingness to share.

(The event was ~1/2 century ago. And if any such details were shared with any mere student, I was not aware of it.)

Understood - I shared more as a PSA given that there seems to be a lot of mushroom enthusiasts here on HN. It’s something that frustrates me about articles and even books on mushrooms.