Although this is off topic posting this here to counteract the false information
It doesn’t seem like you are knowledgeable in fungi so it would be appreciated if you did not give bad advice to a new naturalist.
Nibbling for taste is a key diagnostic characteristic and is mentioned in many keys and field guides. Mushrooms unlike plants are not dangerous to taste, mushroom toxins cannot be absorbed through mucous membranes, that being to take a small nibble without swallowing. There are plenty of resources out there explaining how to do this safely and why it is ok to do so.
No mushroom that will hurt you by touch alone(except maybe fire coral(trichoderma cornudea) which is not definitive and is a very distinctive fungus with a limited range),
No mushrooms that will hurt you through smelling (except maybe certain gyromitria sp releasing compounds that might be harmful to breathe in when heated and cooked but that doesn’t count as smelling a mushroom in the field and people still eat them in some cultures)
Psilocybin is not a poison “The lethal dose of psilocybin in humans is unknown, but has been estimated to be approximately 200 times a typical recreational dose” so yea definitely not going to kill you from licking it
As said previously the examples you listed “psilocybin, muscarine, amanitin” cannot be absorbed through mucous membranes, and thus tasting mushrooms containing them is safe.
And as a personal note, @LichenLiminalis I don’t think you should observe only easy to id organisms, no other person should tell you what to observe, observe what brings you joy and curiosity.
@ericakeklak it would’ve been appreciated if you did not delete your post. It is ok to be incorrect, and now there is missing context as it cannot be seen what I was replying to
Pulling mushroom fruiting bodies is not harmful to the the rest of the fungus and research shows that it might be beneficial. It is the equivalent to pulling a fruit off of a tree. That being said, don’t overturn every mushrooms you see, and maybe place it back and make it look neat if you care about that.
I am looking out for people and do not want them to get hurt in similar ways I got hurt on the field. It is discouraging to others to tell them to avoid doing something useful for ID, and this could just be my don’t touch anything rule. Fungi are probably the most resilient to being uprooted, toyed with, and split apart, but as a general rule even teenagers should know is not to do something that could reasonably damage an organism or hurt them.
Tangent about swallowing fungi
It is true that almost nothing of a mushroom can pass through mucous membranes…and still, people accidentally ingest things they put in their mouth (I apologize for my hypocrisy having lived in several Aspergillus-infested apartments where I risk sepsis on the daily due to my immunity issues). Most people don’t have issues with swallowing when tasting to ID (as seen by the hundreds of people who observe mushrooms with scents and flavors in the description), and newcomers must be careful not to swallow. Some individuals have difficulty using their jaw, for example, and might accidentally swallow especially if startled or swallow as reflex.
I’m not saying not taste or smell at all; I’m saying to be careful and bring a friend.
Long psilocybin tangent
Psilocybin is not a poison “The lethal dose of psilocybin in humans is unknown, but has been estimated to be approximately 200 times a typical recreational dose” so yea definitely not going to kill you from licking it
In small doses it has a medically significant effect and may kill in large doses. All SDS for concentrations of psilocybin I’ve seen (Novachem published 2024, Supelco published 2024, Cayman Chemical published 2025, all not sponsored; and do note that these sheets are for a processed psilocybin product in a formula and concentration that may differ from that found in mushrooms) suggest not even tasting. Additionally, I asked a toxicologist this question exact once and they said it is just as much of a poison as other understudied natural chemicals. Many others concurred on that if something isn’t studied well enough it’s a good idea to avoid it. Overall, this shouldn’t discourage observers if they are responsible, cautious, and don’t already ID something on the danger level of an Amanita but lick anyway.
It’s not likely any new observer will find something that will hurt them, but there are some people who do not want to interact with a species due to the stigma surrounding its poison, “nonpoisonous” hallucinogen, or another associated hazard. Stigma around many chemicals in nature is still a thing, and I don’t want a person who might have this stigma to assume that nibbling = ingesting a little (thank you for explaining the difference) and feel shame over feeling slightly unwell after a journey. That stops all joy entirely.
And as a personal note, @LichenLiminalis I don’t think you should observe only easy to id organisms, no other person should tell you what to observe, observe what brings you joy and curiosity.
I apologize that my claims came off as commanding; I intended to provide recommendations. We all want to keep getting and giving advice, and I gave them the easy answer because that’s usually what people are here to do. @LichenLiminalis I hope I didn’t discourage you from going out and observing because the point of iNaturalist is to observe (responsibly) as much life as possible. Sorry for the rant!
@ericakeklak it would’ve been appreciated if you did not delete your post. It is ok to be incorrect, and now there is missing context as it cannot be seen what I was replying to
My reply here should restore enough of the context to continue the conversation.
You are taking good photos. Please post them, whether you can ID them or not. (The general ID Fungus is a help, of course.) Post whatever you want. (As a botanist I’d encourage you to ID plants, of course, thought this is the season for posting mushrooms, for sure.) Believe me, you can’t post “too many” photos. We’re not frustrated by seeing “too many” minimally identified but well photo’d observations (like yours).
Photos of multiple angles do help. If your camera can take extreme close-ups, you may be able to get usable photos of the underside of a mushroom just by putting your camera on the ground and aiming slightly up. (I often do that.) With fungi like the ones you show, the perennial part is the network of mycelia in the ground or the tree or what have you. The mushrooms are short-lived products, like fruit. Think of them like apples on a tree; picking one won’t harm the tree. In fact, if the mushroom is mature and the spores are ready to drop, it would greatly appreciate (if it could appreciate) your picking it up and carrying it to a new place, spreading spores as you go.
I’m glad to see that you’re already thinking about identifying. Will you make mistakes? Duh. Of course you’ll make mistakes. I’ll be happy to welcome you into Club Mistake Maker. Bet you won’t beat me any time soon; I have withdrawn over 10,000 identifications, sometimes because I learn how to ID it better (Fungi to Amanita to Amanita muscari, for example) but many times because I was wrong. Pay attention to notifications on your dashboard. Learn about species that intrigue you. If you’re interested in lichens in the PNW, I recommend “Macrolichens of the Pacific Northwest,” a well illustrated field guide. Try identifying some things you know well, maybe obervations near where you live, and branch out from there. Identifying can become a pleasant, relaxing activity.
Although I know it doesn’t damage the fungi, I struggle to validate with uprooting and damaging the mushrooms. Where I live it’s actually illegal to do so in national parks. Far too many people destroy “bad” mushrooms and when taking some trails it’s really not a neutral interaction with nature. One could argue that no interaction is absolutely neutral, but this would be beside the point of engaging in a responsible manner with nature.
Naturally this is very different than the limited and discreet uproot to learn/study that is being commented in this forum, nobody here is insinuating to systematically seek to destroy “bad fungi”. But it feels such a shame in some popular trails to see the broken mushrooms all around.
So I fully understand and share with the OP reluctance to do so.
I most often only photo the trunk and the underside of the hat of mushrooms with the macro objective of my phone. It is not perfect, but leaves everything intact.
But when I join a field trip with a mycologist, we usually pick all the mushrooms and he demonstrates them in his hands. Usually we just throw them away. This is however much less frequent than if everyone picked up every mushroom on their own forest walk.
Yes, this is quite different from a trend which consists of destroying dangerous mushrooms to protect others. Typically Amanita phalloides. The same with the Amanita muscaria.
Identifying is more fun than correcting. If you upload your photos with an identification that you are confident is correct, that’s great - even if the id is at kingdom level.
I live in a forest,bordering on a national forest. I will say the animals do the majority of the mushroom “destruction” that I see,in the course of consuming or rejecting the mushrooms. All that breakage does spread the spores, so if humans are doing the breaking, you can thank them for continuing the spread more than the “damage”.
As for picking or pulling the mushrooms, go ahead ( just not in the forests with no pick rules, which probably extends to everything growing)
To loosely misquote (I’m sure) Hope Jahren in her book Lab Girl, she explains that fungus/fungi is the entire structure and the mushroom is only the fruiting body. She does explain that to call a mushroom the fungus is the same as seeing a penis and referring to that as a man. She asks that we stop calling mushrooms fungi and call it a mushroom. The fruiting body has one function, to release spores.
I’m with those who are reluctant to overturn mushrooms for a photo.
I fully understand that it’s no different than picking a fruit from a tree, but I also wouldn’t pick a fruit from a tree just to photograph it. Especially not if it’s along a public trail, or I don’t know what it is. The seeds may not be ripe yet, it may be a species that stays on the tree over winter and feeds birds, et cetera. Even if it was going to drop on it’s own tomorrow, I don’t want to deprive the next person to come along of seeing the tree in the same state I found it in.
There are of course times I would pick fruit or mushrooms. If I want to eat it (and it’s on my own property or somewhere else I’m allowed to pick) then only the usual rules of sustainable foraging apply. Or hypothetically if I found an unknown fruit tree growing on property I manage, and found out that whether it’s a native or invasive lookalike came down to the shape of the seeds, of course I would need to pick one and slice it open.
Yes, some mushrooms can only be identified to species from a photo after damaging them (and some not even then) but I think before doing intentional damage to nature (however minor) we need to consider what the benefit actually is. It might be necessary for identification but how important is getting that identification? Is it worth damaging the mushroom for? Or is it more important to leave the beauty of the forest the way you found it? Sometimes even if it’s in a non-public place and a species I know beetle larvae will destroy in a day, it just feels more respectful to me to leave it as untouched in the moment as possible. It’s as much about my own mindfulness and how I want to move through the woods as it is about the fungus and it’s ability to produce spores.
Well, it can be very important. The site where I spend most of my time has legal protection because of its fungi, and getting the necessary information to get it recognised by law involved picking thousands of fungi for identification. But I take your point. At the time you pick it, you can’t know whether it is going to result in an important record. It may result in no record at all.
Another reason for restraint in picking is that mushrooms and other fruiting bodies are habitat to thousands of other species. Just picking one and turning it over may shorten its useful life to the larvae living in it. I’m not saying don’t do it, just don’t do it more than you really need to.
We are going to get told off for straying outside the title of the thread soon.
That’s very cool that the site was protected for it’s fungi! And I want to clarify that I didn’t mean the question in a rhetorical way, but just to literally think about it on a case by case basis.
To get back on topic, nope, not annoying at all to post lots of observations with coarse ID’s. I for one find them fun to go through for my area!
I’m in total agreement with you on this. I find it troubling to see mushrooms uprooted and thrown around in a location where others might enjoy viewing them along a trail, etc. With that said, I uproot many mushrooms to get the entire shot if I think it is needed but I try not to do that in places where people hike.
Speaking purely for myself, I don’t get annoyed at Unknowns (unless it’s multiple organisms in the photo with no guidance about what we’re supposed to be looking at. Then I get a little testy.) Much as I like bumping something to RG, there’s something very satisfying about clearing out a page or two of previously Unknown observations. That being said, having them sorted into taxonomic buckets at the outset is helpful. Sometimes, I just want to look at certain things. Other times, I want to stretch my skills a bit.
What I think is most important is that you continue to enjoy contributing. It does no good to go out and touch grass if that becomes a stressful experience, yeah?
Post as much as you’d like! You never know which data points will be useful. I’ve posted over 10k observations now and I don’t know how to ID maybe 70% of them to a species level (bugs are hard, mushrooms seem harder). On iNat we have heavy observers and heavy identifiers, and then the mad lads on here who do a lot of both.
I try to make sure to follow some sort of rules that I’ve set for myself in regards to observations. Firstly I’m not gonna upload each individual ant from an ant hill as separate observations. But if I see similar looking beetles 30 feet apart on a trail, I might upload them separately, I might just upload one. It depends on the context, I go with my gut I guess.
So far with my limited number of Fungi posts I’ve definitely had a good chunk go un-IDed. I think that’s just something we observers have to accept for some taxa. If it’s a bird, 500 people are going to tell me that it’s a Mallard (and I appreciate them all for it (although it does spam my notifs)). If it’s an obscure Rove Beetle, it’s crickets (probably because no one really knows, not even the entomologists and taxonomists).
Have fun and don’t worry too much. If you ever make a mistake I’d hope someone would politely correct you.
Much as I like bumping something to RG, there’s something very satisfying about clearing out a page or two of previously Unknown observations. That being said, having them sorted into taxonomic buckets at the outset is helpful. Sometimes, I just want to look at certain things. Other times, I want to stretch my skills a bit.