If there is one sentence that Sabine Mengel can no longer hear, it is: “You can eat all mushrooms – some of them only once.” The Obergriesbach native is a mushroom expert and member of the German Society for Mycology, the science that deals with mushrooms. As such, she offers mushroom hikes, for example, and Mengel also works as a poison control center advisor. She is also available to answer questions if forest walkers are unsure whether the mushrooms they have collected are edible. For the upcoming mushroom season, she has useful tips and tricks for collectors.
The calendar is slowly moving towards late summer, with less than a month left until the start of autumn. For enthusiastic mushroom pickers, this means that it's finally starting. “The largest selection is available when it's nice and moist in autumn, so between September and the end of October,” says Sabine Mengel. The first specimens are available even earlier, with edible mushrooms such as summer porcini or chanterelles sometimes sprouting from June or July. Edible mushrooms are the most popular way for beginners to get started in the world of mushrooms.
Photo: Dominik Durner
Mengel's most important advice for them is: “Never eat a mushroom if you are not 100 percent sure that it is edible at all.” For many well-known mushrooms such as button mushrooms or chanterelles, there are numerous inedible or even poisonous counterparts or mushroom species that are at least similar to them. The button mushroom has a poisonous relative in its own family, the carbolic mushroom or chanterelle. “That's actually the majority of cases of poisoning that reach me: people who say they ate beautiful mushrooms from their garden – and then they got a stomachache.”
Even mushrooms and chanterelles: Most edible mushrooms have poisonous counterparts
In the case of the carbolic mushroom, it can only be distinguished from its edible relatives by a yellow discoloration at the base of the stem. This is another tip from Mengel: In order to identify it, it is important that the mushroom has been collected “correctly”. To do this, collectors must carefully pull the entire fruiting body out of the ground, not just the part of the mushroom that is visible on the surface. “It can be important whether the mushrooms have a bulb or not, what the bulb looks like and whether it changes color when you cut into it,” explains Mengel.
Photo: Dominik Durner
Such nuances can remain hidden, especially for beginners, but mushroom experts like Mengel can help: “If you want to have mushrooms identified, you can contact the experts and bring them over with the mushrooms.” Smell and minimal visual differences can also be crucial when identifying mushrooms. “There is no such thing as food approval via WhatsApp photo,” says Mengel, who also strongly advises against mushroom identification apps. Mushroom experts' contact details can be found on the website of the German Mycological Society and on the website of the Bavarian Mycological Society. “Typically it's free, people do it on a voluntary basis,” says Mengel.
Mushrooms for beginners: The edible brown cap can only be confused with other edible mushrooms
The mushroom that is the least dangerous for beginners is also the one that is most common in the local forests: the brown cap, also known as the chestnut bolete. The spherical cap of the brown cap is reminiscent of the sweet chestnut. Mengel says: “It is fairly easy to recognize or at most confused with other edible mushrooms.”
Photo: Dominik Durner
The chanterelles, which include the chanterelle, are also all considered edible – but Mengel would still advise beginners against it: “You have to be able to recognize the chanterelles, otherwise you might end up with a poisonous mushroom.” Such a mix-up was also responsible for one of the worst poisonings that Mengel had to deal with in the poison control center. A collector had picked a horned chanterelle instead of a chanterelle – which causes severe kidney damage.
Mushroom expert Sabine Mengel: “Many mushrooms – even edible ones – are poisonous when raw”
When collecting, forest walkers only have to worry about storage: collecting itself is done without any safety measures, and mushrooms only release their toxins when eaten. The mushroom basket should contain specimens that you are not sure about, but should be kept separate from those that are definitely edible – “so that spores don't get on the other mushrooms.” Beginners also have to be careful here, says Sabine Mengel: “Many mushrooms – even edible ones – are poisonous when raw.” That's why they have to be heated thoroughly before eating. There are also mushrooms, for example, whose poisonous effect only takes effect after two or three weeks.
Photo: Dominik Durner
Otherwise, Mengel recommends that beginners exchange ideas with others who share the same hobby, for example on mushroom hikes or in Internet forums: “In practice, you learn a lot more than you would from books.” Mengel cannot provide blanket tips for good places to find mushrooms. Mushrooms have different needs: “For my favorite mushroom, for example, the curly hen, I would have to go somewhere where there are pine trees.” But that doesn't necessarily mean that there are curly hens there too.” In the end, the experience of “going mushroom hunting” is an adventure: “The journey is the destination.”
info: In a small mushroom exhibition in front of her house at Talstraße 17 in Obergriesbach, Sabine Mengel presented various specimens that she had collected in local forests, along with explanations.
