Common Edible Mushrooms

COMMON EDIBLE MUSHROOMS
mon as to be rarely or never found, but many a mushroom convicted
as poisonous by any of these tests might well have been
edible and delicious. In fact, it can be stated flatly that no one of
these tests, nor all of them put together, will serve to separate the
poisonous kinds from the edible.
For the proof of the mushroom is in the eating. Some kinds are
known to be edible because people have eaten them without ill
effects, and others are known to be poisonous because when eaten
they have caused illness. In this respect mushrooms do not differ
from other poisonous plants, such as water hemlock and deadly
nightshade. There is no external sign by which we can see that
water hemlock is fatal if eaten, and we know that it is only because
people in the past have been poisoned by it and their survivors
have described the plant accurately enough so that others
might recognize and avoid it. One of our most: generally grown
and delicious of garden vegetables, the tomato, was not commonly
grown in England or America for more than two hundred years
after it had been taken to Europe from South America. Because
of its resemblance to its near relative, the deadly nightshade,
it was considered poisonous and was cultivated only as a botanical
curiosity. Only by eating it did people find out that it was not
poisonous. The same thing is true of mushrooms. Of two that are
closely related one may be poisonous and the other perfectly
wholesome, and only by knowing the distinguishing characters of
each can one separate the good from the bad.
An example will illustrate how subtle this difference sometimes
is. Lepiota morgani is a poisonous mushroom and if eaten causes
severe, though seldom fatal, illness. Lepiota rachodes is edible and
delicious. These two are so closely related and look so much alike
that even an expert can tell them apart only by the fact that mature
specimens of L. morgani, the poisonous one, have green gills
and deposit pale green spores, whereas the spores and gills of
L. rachodes, the edible one, are white. Half-grown specimens of
the two kinds are identical. L. morgani commonly comes up in
the spring, /_,. rachodes in the fall, and people who know them
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