Planning to mushroom hunt this long weekend? Some tips on the dos and don'ts

Outdoor activities are one of the safe things to do during this pandemic and a growing, but dangerous, trend is mushroom picking.

In the last month, calls to the Ontario Poison Centre have nearly doubled from people who have picked and eaten the wrong, wild mushroom and some people had to be hospitalized. 

Second-generation forager Denis Vidmar knows all about foraging here in Windsor-Essex. He owns The Mushroom Hub store in Windsor. 

"Like any other hobby, when it comes to foraging you want to know your plants," Vidmar told CBC Radio's Windsor Morning host Tony Doucette. 

"What happens is, even though there is a small percentage of truly deadly mushrooms, they're found everywhere."

There are also look-alikes with edible mushrooms that can be found across Essex County, said Vidmar, who advises most people to stay away from "tiny, little brown mushrooms" which are commonly a very poisonous variety. 

"I always tell [people], make sure you're very careful and the verification process has to be quite good."

LISTEN | Hear more from Vidmar about what to watch for:

Vidmar said many people use apps to help identify mushroom varieties, though he finds them to be very unreliable. 

"What I've come to understand is that it's about 60 to 70 per cent accurate with regards to mushrooms I have been feeding it through the system," he said. 

"[Aside] from the app I would use one or two or three other books to verify your mushroom," said Vidmar. 

Dangerous repercussions for bad varieties

Ontario's poison centre says mistaking poisonous mushrooms for edible ones could cause serious consequences. Some symptoms can be mild, such as nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain, but eating poisonous mushrooms can also cause liver failure, seizures and comas.

Severe symptoms can also take a few days to appear.

"What is particularly challenging about foraging wild mushrooms is that some poisonous varieties can look very similar to mushrooms that are safe to consume. Often, poisonous and non-poisonous mushrooms grow side by side," the centre's medical director, Dr. Margaret Thompson, said in a statement.

She said it's also critical to know the geographic areas where mushrooms are growing.

"For instance, a poisonous mushroom in Canada may look very similar to a mushroom species that is known to be safe to consume in other countries," she said.

But still, in our region mushrooms like "hen of the woods" or "chicken of the woods" can be easier to identify and safer to consume, said Vidmar.

"It's best to speak to somebody and go with somebody who knows a little bit more and verify, verify, verify," he said.

"Every mushroom should be verified before ingesting."