I couldn't be happier with the reception this blog has received.
It's been a pleasure researching and writing it, and an even greater pleasure hearing back from people who have enjoyed reading it.
However, there have been a couple of developments and I want to address them explicitly:
I've decided to shut down the mycology discord server. As cool as it was to have the server slowly growing, and as much as I enjoyed the start of conversations in the last week, I decided that taking on the responsibility of administering the server in a way I felt was safe and responsible was not realistic. As anyone who has read these posts knows, I am a stickler for safety, first and foremost. In order to administer the discord server in a way which fostered the standards of safety I believe are invaluable, it would have required me to have a constant vigilance on which posts were promoted there, something I was not going to have the time to do. Rather than inadvertently create a forum where irresponsible or dangerous material was posted, I decided it was much simpler for me to simply end the experiment entirely. I sent out an "at everyone" message with some explanation, but I don't know whether it survived the deletion. Whatever the case may be, I'm sorry for the sudden decision.
I have decided to shift the focus of this blog entirely away from foraging and identification for consumption. I appreciate the warm reception I received in the foraging tag and among the homesteader community here on steemit. But I have felt ill at ease from the start about including edibility information in these posts, especially indicating that certain types of mushrooms were affirmatively edible. As I've said in the many disclaimers I've written in each post, hunting wild mushrooms is inherently risky - and I don't want anyone to be put at risk based on an implied encouragement in my posts to go hunt wild mushrooms. Although I think my disclaimers have been absolutely clear on the topic, from now on I will not be indicating whether a mushroom is edible or inedible. The characteristic of "Edibility" will also be removed from the "Macrocharacteristic" portion of the posts. I will continue to highlight specific mycotoxins produced by mushrooms as they are incredible, often unique chemical compounds deserving of study and understanding.
Finally, I will no longer be posting this blog in the foraging tag. The purpose of the blog is to learn about mushrooms from a purely intellectual perspective. They are incredible organisms, with many incredible traits which are not yet fully understood. I enjoy mushrooms and mycology as a purely intellectual exercise. That was always the primary purpose of these posts, as the disclaimers made abundantly clear, but now I want to be 100%, totally unequivocal about that.
As I've said before, and as I will say in a disclaimer at the top of every post from now on, you should not base any decision to eat any mushroom on my posts. They are the posts of an amateur. They are almost certain to contain inaccuracies, if only due to the vagaries of identifying often cryptic individual species. Moreover, they are certainly not comprehensive. If you want to hunt wild mushrooms, buy a professional mushroom field guide which has been designed for that purpose. I've linked to two good ones here, but there are many others, often specific to your part of the world. Alternatively, google your nearest mycological society or meet up group, or get to know a local forager with personal experience on your local fungi.
Since I have posted a disclaimer like this in almost every post and yet still have seen dangerous and reckless mushroom foraging posts put on steemit, let me reiterate that as concisely as possible
DO NOT HUNT WILD MUSHROOMS WITHOUT RELYING ON A COMBINATION OF PROFESSIONAL FIELD GUIDES, IN PERSON PROFESSIONAL GUIDANCE, OR IN PERSON GUIDANCE BY SOMEONE TRUSTWORTHY WHO HAS COPIOUS LOCAL, SPECIALIZED MUSHROOM HUNTING EXPERIENCE. FAILURE TO DO SO CAN RESULT IN GRIEVOUS PERSONAL HARM OR DEATH. MOREOVER EVEN A PROFESSIONAL CAN BE WRONG AS MUSHROOM HUNTING IS NEVER A 100% RISK FREE ACTIVITY.
There. Got that off my chest. I know that my new, aggressively anti-foraging position may drive off some readers - which I understand. But if that's the cost for stopping a single person from having a dangerous mushroom related experience, I pay it gladly.
Next time, a review of the first 10 species highlighted by The Amateur Mycologist.
Then, in #15, we will move on to a uniquely elegant species that you may not be familiar with.
Picture:
sorry to see it gone but glad you had the right intentions! thank you!
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
I appreciate that :)
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Hi @dber, I only just discovered that blog. I fully understand your reluctance to post information about the edibility of mushrooms and I think that it is a good move to no longer offer any information about edibility. It is just too risky to suggest that anyone eat a wild mushroom, they are just too difficult to conclusively identify.
Having said that I do hope you continue to post photos of mushrooms and basic information about them, without any information on edibility. I frequently take fine art photos of mushrooms and not really suitable for identification but pretty to look at. I have been toying with the idea of teaming up with someone to do a photo book with my photos and info about each one. You can see some of my mushroom photos in this gallery on 500px.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Those are so beautiful! You are a very talented macro-photographer. I would love to collaborate on something! I really am an amateur, I don't want to dissimulate about that, but I would take ID'ing these very seriously and try to bring as many resources to bear as possible. We should talk more either in steemit chat or on discord.
Re: edibility - I absolutely plan on continuing to post on mushrooms - while also eliminating most discussion about edibility from the posts. I am conflicted about whether to discuss mycotoxins, but may fall on the side of avoiding that topic as well.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
I think there is value to calling out toxicity on mushrooms that are are dangerous. From an ethics standpoint it think it is generally fine to describe the toxicity, it is possible that someone could use the information to do bad things but, not very likely and you are not encouraging anyone to do so. This information is more like a hammer, hammers, generally are used as intended for creation, but can be used to do damage and harm.
Toxicity is different than talking about edibility, in that indicating that a mushroom is edible could be taken as encouragement and you know that even for the experienced it is quite possible to misidentify a toxic mushroom as and edible one. Knowing that, encouraging an amateur to eat a mushroom that looks like something you have identified as edible is not a good idea.
At least that is how I see the issue of information about toxicity vs edibility.
Oh, and I am kellyjanderson#0161 on Discord, I would love to chat there.
Cheers,
@kellyjanderson.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Very nice post
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Congratulations! This post has been upvoted from the communal account, @minnowsupport, by DBER from the Minnow Support Project. It's a witness project run by aggroed, ausbitbank, teamsteem, theprophet0, and someguy123. The goal is to help Steemit grow by supporting Minnows and creating a social network. Please find us in the Peace, Abundance, and Liberty Network (PALnet) Discord Channel. It's a completely public and open space to all members of the Steemit community who voluntarily choose to be there.
If you like what we're doing please upvote this comment so we can continue to build the community account that's supporting all members.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
we can eat any mushroom we see, just for some, we can only taste once XD
(People die from eating poisonous mushroom!! Do not eat anything unless its 100% known to be safe!!)
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Haha, precisely!
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
that's ashame @dber, though I understand your position. It will sadden me tremendously to pull the mycology discord listings from whalebot :( maybe when people ask about and tag for mushrooms/mycology, I'll just start by referring them to your profile instead! :D
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
I am open to being part of a discord channel run by someone else - but the responsibility to parse safe and unsafe material was not something i felt up to doing - very anti confrontational :).
Having said that im happy to talk to folks about mushrooms in a responsible way at any time - and i'll encourage people to dm me in future posts
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
As you and I have discussed before, I can appreciate your perspective. I've seen some incorrect posts about mushrooms and wild edible plants on Steemit -- with incorrect identification and dangerous rules-of-thumb for deciding whether something is OK to eat or not! Relying on just any post in the foraging or mushroom tags is so risky here. Correct identification and preparation are so important. That's one reason I curate for the @foraging-trail and put in so much time to double-check information and scientific names on posts.
I take it from your post here that I should not curate any of your future mushroom posts to the @foraging-trail. But I would like to add this one to the @foraging-trail, so that people understand why your great mushroom posts may not be there. Or you could simply not say anything at all about the toxicity or edibility of any mushroom, like the folks at MushroomExpert.com. They just say:
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
I think it would be best if they are not put on the foraging-trail in the future - but I'm ok with this update post being put on.
I am conflicted re: talking about toxicity. The mycotoxins are awesome chemicals that make the posts a lot more interesting and complete. However, in mushrooms where there are no specific mycotoxins present there may be an implication taken that the mushroom is therefore edible. of course this may not be true - many mushrooms can make people violently ill even though they have no unique mycotoxin present
Long and short of it, the safest bet would be to do exactly as Kuo does and simply include zero edibility related information. I may in fact do that, though it would be a shame :(
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Why not just refer each with a link to a journal designed for toxicity and edibility and continue on? Jus wondering.......
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Because I think if people want to find that information, it is widely available all over the place - but I don't feel comfortable being the one to plant the idea in their heads.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit