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2 mushrooms hard to fuck up in America.
I remember selling like 5 lbs of morels when I was a kid and getting like $200. That was without even driving to the city to make the real money.
note that chicken of the woods may give about 50% of people horrible nausea for several hours
Sure, if you're weak. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laetiporus
It's not near 50% of people though.
It seems I misremembered this story that I read years ago after eating some and feeling queasy for several hours:
To add a caveat, in 2004 when the current edition of the Encyclopedia of Fungi was launched at a National Trust property, to which 60 journalists were invited for lunch, there was an incident involving this species. On the day before, we had found a specimen of Laetiporus sulphureus in prime condition, on Oak, which was collected and incorporated, lightly sauteed, as part of the meal.
Approximately half an hour after ingestion, 6 of the 60 journalists became violently ill – vomiting, cyanosed, sweating, icy cold, with raised pulse, and very frightened. The remaining 54 suffered no ill effects.
The doctor who attended diagnosed a severe allergic reaction and the symptoms subsided after about 2 hours.
Subsequent investigation turned up research by a US-based toxicology team at the University of Berkeley, California. It had concluded that 10% of the people taking part in extensive trials, suffered these severe effects. Our experience was exactly in line with this figure.
It’s also worth bearing in mind that Laetiporus sulphureus growing on Taxus hosts, is potentially lethal.
https://blog.mycology.cornell.edu/2006/10/31/eating-the-chicken-of-the-woods/
Chicken of the Woods is the shit!!!
What, a wood pilz that is edible?
There are also mushrooms that look like morels that you shouldn't eat. Somewhat easy to filter out if you know what you're looking for but maybe wouldn't say hard to fuck up.
Can you show me some that would grow in the same areas next to dead elms? I'm unfamiliar with any and I've foraged for them a lot.
E: Looks like this has some info on False Morels further below. I'd have a difficult time mistaking one for the other myself but eh?
I think some people want to find morels so bad they get a sort of "buck fever" and convince themselves they've found one. That's all I can imagine because to my eyes they would be hard to mix up. Same with chanterelle and false chanterelle. Like... sure, I guess if you are profoundly incautious.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6hA0wqLVkY - True vs False Chanterelle for the curious.
I'm not informed enough to answer any of your questions about them. You should find a better source than my fuzzy memory. I just remember being warned about them since morel picking is fairly popular around where I live.
