According to The Mushroom Handbook by Louis C.C. Krieger (New York, 1967), there are three deadly poisonous mushrooms in the United States, if not the world. They are The Fly (amanita muscaria), The Panther Amanita (amanita pantherina) and The Destroying Angel (amanita virosa). Other mushrooms may not be "palatable" but they will not make you ill or cause death. The famous and prized edible gourmet Caesar's Mushroom (amanita caesarea) superficially resembles these poisonous ones, but the Caesar's Mushroom is generally pinkish or yellowish in color and has no warts on the top.

Since first uploading this page, I was contacted by a couple of mushroom experts in England and Canada, informing me that some of my information was not accurate. As a result, I bought a pocket-sized guide to Familiar Mushrooms, published by the American National Audubon Society (New York, 1990). In this book we are advised not to eat raw wild mushrooms. However, I have done this with no problem. Also, just as some people experience allergic reactions from tomatoes and peanuts, so also do other people get allergic reactions to otherwise edible mushrooms. Who will suffer such an allergic reaction is unknown. Certain other mushrooms cause "allergic reactions" only when they are eaten in combination with the drinking of alcohol. If you are interested in exploring this further and possibly selling some of your more valuable mushrooms to gourmet restaurants, first get yourself a copy of this Audubon Guide and do some experimenting on your own. Personally, I think that the "poisonous" effects of some of these mushrooms are exaggerated. After all, there are people in Northeast Texas who will tell you that poke sallet greens are "poisonous", especially if not "par-boiled" first. That is an old wives' tale.

And, for those who can appreciate this, the Audubon Guide classifies the "Liberty Cap" mushroom (psilocybe semilanceata) as a "poisonous" mushroom. The guidebook states (page 56), "The Liberty Cap is one of a small group of mushrooms that induce altered states of consciousness when ingested. Some persons collect them for this reason. ... In grassy farmyard fields and well-manured meadows." Well, my question is: when was the last time that you ever heard of anybody being taken to the hospital emergency room for overdosing on psilocybin? Never. I've used psilocybin a couple of times. I prefer peyote myself. But just because a plant (of any sort, marijuana included) induces an "altered state of consciousness" does not necessarily mean that it is "poisonous" enough to kill you. I am sure that some of you can recall the hysteria of the movie Reefer Madness.

The Audubon Guide does not contain information about the Caesar's Mushroom, to my surprise, but it does include the deadly Fly Agaric which has a reddish cap with warts. It looks a bit like the image of the Caesar's Mushroom in The Mushroom Handbook where a comparison is made to The Fly. All these mushrooms are distinctive enough to be recognizable immediately. Just avoid all of them and harvest the ones that you know are safe. This is not a matter of "rocket science" by any stretch of the imagination. In addition to these white or whitish "toadstool" types of poisonous mushrooms, there are several brown species, such as The Deadly Galerina (galerina autumnalis) and The Haymaker's Mushroom (psathyrella foenisecii), that are considered poisonous. Both of these could be confused with the safely edible Deer Mushroom (pluteus atricapillus) or Fawn Mushroom (pluteus cervinus).

Note the little bits of soil on the top of this one. If you want to cook dirty mushrooms, DO NOT wash them off. Use a brush to flake away such little bits of soil and other dirt. The heat of the cooking process will kill any "germs" that they might contain. Also, you should never pull a wild mushroom up by the roots. Cut it off a bit above the ground level, leaving its roots in the soil. Eventually it will sprout again from these roots. When collecting wild mushrooms, place them in a porous straw basket. This allows their spores to fall out through the spaces between the straw and reseed the ground where you are walking.

The Boletus Mushrooms come in a variety of colors: yellow, red and brown. There is also a rather "unappetizing" but otherwise edible Boletus called The Bluing Boletus. When you cut it, it turns blue, like blue ink. I have seen this happen a lot of times. When it turns blue, it doesn't look very appetizing. Boletus Mushrooms might cause "allergic reactions" in some people, but they are harmless. For cooking purposes, the younger they are, the tastier; however, on the old PBS-TV intro to Jacques Pepin's cooking show, they showed M. Pepin cutting down a huge Boletus in a forest in Connecticut. If it's good enough for Jacques Pepin, it's good enough for me.