What to do if you get poisoned by eating wild mushrooms? A mushroom-picking auntie tells you how to spend the mushroom season safely!

Author: Thank you

Photography: Ji Junhui

Spring is the most beautiful season

The annual wild delicacies of Shanghai people start with eating wild vegetables, and in April they start eating mushrooms and red pine mushrooms to warm up. When Yunnan's pine mushrooms, porcini and Alpinia fasciata start to be sold, they "take" some from supermarkets and bring them back to try. Of course, some people fly directly to Yunnan.

When you ask Yunnan people, when is the best time to eat mushrooms? They will humorously answer you, wait for the government's message - every June and July, the Yunnan Provincial Government will send a message to remind everyone to be cautious in eating mushrooms. This is regarded by the locals as a signal to eat mushrooms, "like a starting gun". OK, thank you for the reminder, the message has been received, and it's time to eat!

But in fact , the mushroom season in Yunnan usually starts in May. After the first rain, the mushrooms start to emerge.

Yunnan people look down on common mushrooms such as oyster mushrooms and enoki mushrooms. In their eyes, only wild mushrooms that cannot be cultivated artificially can be called "juner". It is not uncommon to see "villains" when eating mushrooms in Yunnan.

Someone saw a friend talking, and subtitles in Chinese and English appeared above his head. Someone ate mushrooms and thought he should be fine, until he heard his dog say to him, "Hey, did you like the mushrooms just now?"

Someone invited his friend to his house to see a live Transformer. What the friend saw was a power strip lying in a box.

**Some people say:** AI is so powerful, why not ask it to do the recognition?

EMMM......In 2023, William D.'s family often eats mushrooms. Identifying mushrooms is almost a thing that has been passed down from generation to generation, but William D. feels that the advantage of his generation is the use of smartphones. So he took a photo of the mushrooms in his backyard and uploaded it to the "mushroom identifier" on his phone. The phone told him that this was an edible variety. But after eating it, he was poisoned.

Shanghai Academy of Agricultural Sciences Mushroom Institute Tips:

Although using AI to identify whether mushrooms are edible sounds advanced, there are actually some risks and uncertainties .

First, there are many types of mushrooms, some of which look similar but have very different toxicities, which poses a great challenge to AI identification. Even though AI technology is very advanced, there is still a risk of misjudgment when identifying mushrooms, a field that requires a high degree of expertise and experience.

Secondly, the accuracy of AI recognition of mushrooms depends largely on the quality of training data and algorithms. If the training data is not comprehensive enough or the algorithm is not optimized enough, the results of AI recognition may be inaccurate. In addition, factors such as the growth environment, season, and region of mushrooms may affect their morphology and characteristics, which may also affect the accuracy of AI recognition.

Therefore, although AI mushroom identification is an interesting and challenging endeavor, it cannot completely replace the judgment and experience of human experts at present. If you are not very familiar with mushrooms, it is best not to try to use AI to identify whether they are edible. The safest way is to consult a professional mushroom expert or refer to a reliable mushroom guide.

**What should I do? ** What if I accidentally meet a villain after eating mushrooms?

Key points:

1. Go to the nearest hospital;

2. Call 120, inform relatives and friends, and drink a lot of warm water or saline to induce vomiting before the ambulance arrives, but do not act rashly if the symptoms are severe;

3. It is best to bring uneaten samples of "poisonous mushrooms" with you when you go to the hospital.

**Some people say: ** Eating wild mushrooms with rice can reduce toxins ?

There is no such saying! Eating edible wild mushrooms and cooking them thoroughly are the key to "guarding against villains". Stir-frying is not recommended. (Of course, the locals in Yunnan do not pay any attention to such advice.)

What delicious mushrooms are recommended in the free shipping area?

Stropharia , commonly known as red pine mushroom . In Shanghai, there is a farm called Shengfei that specializes in growing red pine mushrooms with rice stalks. After the rice is harvested, Stropharia is planted on the spot. The rice straw after harvest can provide cultivation materials for edible fungi, and the mushroom residue after the cultivation of Stropharia can nourish the land and lay the foundation for the next rice season. Planting 1 mu of Stropharia can consume 25 mu of rice straw, and the yield of Stropharia per mu can be as high as 1,500 to 3,500 kilograms. In this cycle, the straw is processed and the mushrooms are harvested, and the soil organic matter content and microbial diversity are also increased.

It is said that the first batch of red pine mushrooms can be eaten as sashimi with mustard soy sauce ~

In addition to red pine mushrooms, the free shipping area is also suitable for growing oyster mushrooms, straw mushrooms, enoki mushrooms and king oyster mushrooms .