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6 mins
Are mushroom recognition apps really reliable?
“You have to be super careful!” More and more French people are going mushroom picking using dedicated mobile applications. Brut spoke with Aurélie Sanchez, mycologist, who warns of the dangers of these applications with sometimes imprecise data. – (Raw.)
“You have to be super careful!” More and more French people are going mushroom picking using dedicated mobile applications. Brut spoke with Aurélie Sanchez, mycologist, who warns of the dangers of these applications with sometimes imprecise data.
“I do not recommend going mushroom picking without any knowledge. It’s super dangerous. (…) Mushrooms are chemical factories”. Aurélie Sanchez is a mycologist at CEMA (Circle of mycological studies in Aquitaine). Many French people enjoy going mushroom picking in the great outdoors, using a mobile app. But for the mycologist, these applications represent a real danger because “they do not yet have enough data. Mushrooms are very polymorphic, they change color and shape too often”. Result: on the “2-3 suggestions that the application will make, if we don’t know the difference, it’s super dangerous”.
“The more dangerous a mushroom is, the longer the incubation time”
France has a total of 30,000 species of mushrooms. Of this total, only “one hundred” are edible, “which makes very little”, underlines the expert, “around twenty are fatal” And “nearby, there are still a lot of toxic mushrooms”. In 2022, there was “almost 2,000 poisonings” adds Aurélie Sanchez. If you want to start mushroom picking, the specialist recommends first contacting a mycological company. Many are those who “offer outings. We will identify the most dangerous mushrooms and then some good edible ones too”.
When picking mushrooms, the mycologist also advises “always take a photo of mushrooms before eating them”. This is a precautionary measure that can be very useful in the event of poisoning. She recalls that the symptoms of poisoning can be gastrointestinal, dehydration or nausea. “The more dangerous the fungus, the longer the incubation time. specifies Aurélie Sanchez, who adds that it can take up to “24 hours”. If any of the symptoms mentioned above appear, you must quickly contact your regional poison control center or 15.