Foraging in Bergen

Know these first

What can hurt you around Bergen in October

4 species on our hazard list have been recorded near here this month, 1 of which can kill a healthy adult. Learn these before you learn anything you intend to eat.

• Can kill

  1 record nearby

  Deadly galerina

  Galerina marginata

  Mistaken for

  Honey mushrooms, velvet shank, and sheathed woodtuft — all wood-growing clusters picked in autumn.

  How to tell

  Small brown cap on dead conifer wood, a ring on the stem, and a rusty-brown spore print. Honey mushroom drops a white print. Take a print before you cook anything you gathered off a log.

  What it does

  Carries the same amatoxins as the death cap in a far smaller body. A handful is enough.

• Hospital

  6 records nearby

  Fly agaric

  Amanita muscaria

  Mistaken for

  Rarely mistaken once it is open — but the buttons, before the cap expands, look like white eggs and get picked as puffballs.

  How to tell

  Cut any 'puffball' in half. Solid white all the way through is a puffball; the outline of a cap, gills and stem inside is an Amanita button.

  What it does

  Ibotenic acid and muscimol: nausea, then confusion, agitation and deep sedation for several hours. Not usually fatal, but genuinely dangerous in children.

• Hospital

  3 records nearby

  Bittersweet nightshade

  Solanum dulcamara

  Mistaken for

  Its red berries get picked as currants or tomatoes by children.

  How to tell

  Purple flowers with a yellow beak, leaves with a pair of small lobes at the base, and berries that ripen green to orange to red on the same cluster.

  What it does

  Solanine: burning throat, vomiting, and in a child, worse.

• Hospital

  1 record nearby

  Sulphur tuft

  Hypholoma fasciculare

  Mistaken for

  Honey mushrooms and other autumn clusters on stumps.

  How to tell

  Sulphur-yellow to greenish gills and a bitter taste on the tip of the tongue. Honey mushroom has white to cream gills and a white spore print.

  What it does

  Prolonged vomiting; in quantity it has caused liver damage.

These are recorded within about 40 km of here in this month, from verified public observations. It is not a complete list of what is dangerous — nothing is — and a species missing from it may still be in your woods. Never eat anything identified from a photograph and a description alone.