At the Aylesbury museum today there was a Fungi exhibition organised by the Bucks Fungus Group http://www.bucksfungusgroup.org.uk . Helen and I headed down with John and Sallie. We did not know what to expect, and we were pleasantly surprised, they had a long set of trestle tables, covered in samples of mushrooms, there must have been over 100 types there and they had all been found this morning with a 20 mile radius.
We had a good look round and John found an expert to identify the samples he had bought along. The people from the group were very knowledgeable, very willing to share their knowledge.
There was one that they had under a plastic bell cover, it was the famous Deathcap, apparently one mouthful would be enough to kill you. The poison is not filtered by the bodies organs, so the toxins circulate round the body doing more and more damage. After some time 10 to 16 days you die. One cure is to get a liver transplant, which has it’s own complications!
I bought a decision tree guide that takes you through the process of figuring out what is what.
It was well worth the effort of going to Aylesbury museum.
