#I can only see so many photos of people overharvesting chanterelles before I go insane

[balthazarslostlibrary]

Things that some people new to foraging fungi do that are not good, annoying, or just plain silly:

- Posting on places like reddit or Facebook for ID of a mushroom that their pet or child ate. Don’t do that. If you think your pet or child has been poisoned, go to a vet or doctor and bring the fungus with you, or at the very least call a poisons hotline. Most national poisons hotlines have people who are good at identifying fungi since this kind of thing happens all the time

- Going out and harvesting every single edible mushroom you can find and coming back with literal bags full. I am pretty avid about foraged fungi, but I have never been able to get through more than a kilo of foraged fungi before they go bad unless I am eating heavily mushroom-based meals every day, or if I spend basically two days dehydrating and processing them. When you take more than you could possibly use or share, you’re just leaving nothing for anyone else and wasting something that other people or wildlife could have eaten.

- Overharvesting in general. Yes, I know that picking mushrooms doesn’t harm the mycelium underground and all that. However, mushrooms are what spreads the spores around and makes the possibility of more colonies starting elsewhere. If you pick every single mushroom you can see, then you are damaging the ability for that colony to propagate. This is especially so for fungi that you are meant to harvest before they mature like certain boletes and shaggy inkcaps.

- Asking for help IDing after picking or damaging a fungus. You can take photos while it’s in nature just as easily as if it was in your living room. If you don’t want to get dirty kneeling down to take photos of the undersides of gills, maybe consider a different hobby. I have seen SO many people post photos on fungi groups when they are handling it in their house without gloves on. I know you can’t get poisoned just from touching a mushroom, but it’s incredibly easy to touch your face, mouth, or eyes absentmindedly, or the faces of other people you are responsible for. The worst example of this I remember seeing is the fungi on someone’s living room table with their very young child within grabbing distance of the mushroom (in this case, it was a deathcap). You don’t want to end up like point one of this list.

- Posting ghost orchids. This is less serious and more just my pet peeve, but COME ON. It looks like a FLOWER.

- On that note, asking for an ID without bothering to do a single search yourself. It will stop people like me mocking you for posting photos of flowers in a mycology group thinking they are mushrooms.

I see all of these constantly.