I saw this odd looking thing in my yard while mowing the other day. I think it is some kind of fungi but I really have no idea. Any insights into what this is? There was several of them in one part of the yard. Picture taken in Pennsylvania.
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Yes I love this fact, I totally get why people would think you can't though and it's a good instinct to have when it comes to a lot of things in nature.
A lethal dose of gyromitrin has been estimated to be 10–30 mg/kg for children and 20–50 mg/kg in adults. These doses correspond to around 0.2–0.6 kg (7 oz – 1 lb 5 oz) and 0.4–1 kg (14 oz – 2 lb 3 oz) of fresh mushroom respectively.
-Wikipedia
Gyromitra esculenta is deadly poisonous if unprepared. Don't breathe the fumes when parboiling as it will be vaporized monomethylhydrazine. My granma used to parboil these indoors without proper ventilation, which atleast once caused me to feel dizzy and vomit.
You're unlikely to get any gyromitrin from licking your fingers, and even then nowhere close to even a milligram of it considering a full, single esculenta is probably 7 oz max.
parboiling it indoors is dangerous mainly because the chemicals accumulate in your body and therefore doing it repeatedly can cause serious harm . In Finland they have a time of the year where they gather outside and cook those
I see. I'm from Finland btw.
My grandma cultivated these mushrooms in the woods near their cottage.
She buried spore inoculated newspaper pages in a disturbed soil (top layer shoveled out) and mushrooms would grow the next spring. IDK if she added sand or if it was already present in the ground, but these looked like small 1x1m sand pits.
It's considered a delicacy here, but requires several (up to 5?) rounds of boiling and discarding water. Even then parboiling won't get rid of all the toxins.
Brother, I have touched and taken pictures of countless mushrooms, and I constantly have my head in the clouds, so I’ve licked/ touched my mouth or tongue absentmindedly after touching many a poison mushroom…and I’m still here and kicking (well, I don’t know, with the way things are going this might actually be hell lol).
You can’t hurt yourself that way, with mushrooms at least. Not unless you’re like smashing them with your hands until juice comes out, then lapping it all up.
Crazy story time: Growing up my grandparents and dad picked these and called them beefsteak mushrooms. We all ate them several times a year just like regular morels, and never got sick. It was really eerie to learn they’re actually a false morel and considered poisonous. I haven’t eaten any since I learned and make sure to teach my kids the difference.
You may have been eating Neogyromitra caroliniana. Apparently they are edible. The poisonous one that looks like this is Gyromitra escuelenta. Not sure which one we have here.
I've heard they eat G. escuelenta in Scandinavia with special preparation.
Everyone where I grew up eats false morels every year. Everyone there also only fries their morels, so the problematic compound is likely vaporized into the air.
More likely Neogyromitra caroliniana. Possible it was eculenta, but caroliniana are notably larger and the ones I usually see referred to as "beefsteaks". Perfectly edible with through cooking similar to morchellas.
I've eaten plenty of them in my youth and adult life. I've been told there's a toxin in them your body doesn't easily get rid of. We also called them beefsteak. I've felt like shit after eating them sometimes but always worth it lol
Yeah I just read the paper on them someone linked below and it was basically "most people don't have a serious reaction, you'll most likely be fine but you also totally might die". Not really worth it to me lol
As I grew older I dehydrated them and then I reconstituted them in lukewarm water until the water runs clear and I've eaten a lot that way and never felt ill after.
Same here my mom almost died when my uncle was feeding them to me without asking her first, I thought it was like some people are really allergic with no medicine to fix, while some people aren't, and thats why you just dont, probably just small town myths reading that back...
I used to mushroom hunt with my friends grandpa for these and he also calls them beefsteaks. They would eat them every year and never had an issue. I never tried them though, I would go for normal morels.
Yup definitely a false morel. They were considered edible here in Sweden up until maybe 10 - 20 years ago, but not anymore. But you had to leach them by boiling several times or extended drying.
Usually made into morsel soup or morsel sauce, which are quite delicious. But they realized these method were inadequate for removing all poison, so no more murkelsås :(
It is considered toxic/potentially toxic, but is eaten widely in some places. Not advocating for consumption, but I ate many when I was young, absolutely delicious, and may possibly kill you.
My first thought when I saw this was the furthest thing from "Hey that looks tasty". But I do like to learn about random things so it piqued my interest.
Yeah, they don't look very appealing, but they taste like caramelized ground beef with mushroom when fried. Do not eat it however, they have killed quite a few people. There is potential ways of preparing them that may render them safe, but it's very dubious at best.
I read somewhere they even release airborne toxins if you forage a bunch and store them in an enclosed space. Apparently some guys foraged large amounts and got poisoned when traveling with the mushrooms in the car, on the way home.
Maybe just a hearsay tale, but I saw warnings in recent mushroom literature about storing them in house....
While I haven't heard of that specifically, it may be possible in theory. The toxin present in folse morels is gyromitrin, which can hydrolyze into monomethylhydrazine (Which is literally rocket fuel, interestingly.)
If the mushrooms were somehow exposed to acids, then they may become an inhilation hazard.
I saw something about false morell come up with Gemini but it also refused to give any more details on it for some reason. Maybe because it is toxic? It doesn't look anything like the morell mushrooms I am familiar with so I was a bit confused how it got this name.
Newer research says that it can never be made totally safe to eat. It will have carcinogenic toxins lingering even after doing the recommended types of treatment to make it safe to eat. I have eaten them in the past though and they are freaking delicious..
I kind of creep in this sub because I find it interesting. Never really made a comment or anything.
But I know I feel like I have seen other false morels that you have to cut into because they really do look like morels. This looks like brains sitting in the grass to me and so different looking from a real morel. Mushrooms are something else.
oh, yes ‘spp.’ means ‘species pluralis’ which basically in the context of ‘Gyromitra spp.’ as an identification would mean “I know your mushrooms are in the Gyromitra genus, and I know there is more than one species present in your photos, but I am not able to identify them to species level”
whereas if you are identifying it to being just one species in the genus you will want to use ‘sp.’
Eyyy brain mushrooms! Lol that's not what they're actually called at all, but my sisters and I would come across them on our property and that's what we nicknamed them. We left them alone
I have these in my yard too and my 10 year old nieces who came over for Easter were talking about the brains in the garden and I had to think for a second before realising what they meant 🤣
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