Foraging in Gothenburg

Know these first

What can hurt you around Gothenburg in October

12 species on our hazard list have been recorded near here this month, 5 of which can kill a healthy adult. Learn these before you learn anything you intend to eat.

• Can kill39 records nearby

  Ragworts and groundsels (Senecio)

  Senecio (the whole genus)

  Mistaken for

  Wild greens and herbal teas — and, in the past, home-grown wheat: Senecio in the flour poisoned whole families in South Africa's George district in 1918.

  How to tell

  Daisy-family plants with yellow flower heads (with or without petals), each head wrapped in a single row of narrow green bracts, often black-tipped, and seeds carrying white fluffy parachutes. A yellow daisy you can't name does not go in the pot.

  What it does

  Pyrrolizidine alkaloids, which baking does not destroy. They block the small veins of the liver (veno-occlusive disease): pain, a swollen liver and fluid in the belly, and in many cases cirrhosis. Children are the most vulnerable.

• Can kill18 records nearby

  Yew

  Taxus baccata

  Mistaken for

  Its sweet red arils look like berries, and it lines churchyards, parks and hedges where foragers pick spruce tips and juniper.

  How to tell

  Flat, dark green needles in two rows, plain green underneath with no white stripes, and red fleshy cups open at one end with a hard seed showing. No cones, no resin smell.

  What it does

  Taxine alkaloids stop the heart. The needles and the seed inside the red flesh are poisonous, there is no antidote, and about 50 g of needles can kill an adult.

• Can kill

  4 records nearby

  Foxglove

  Digitalis purpurea

  Mistaken for

  Comfrey and mullein at the rosette stage, both of which are gathered for tea.

  How to tell

  Foxglove leaves are finely toothed with a strongly netted underside; comfrey leaves are untoothed and bristly, and mullein is thickly woolly and soft as felt.

  What it does

  Cardiac glycosides. A cup of tea made from the wrong rosette has killed.

• Can kill

  3 records nearby

  Brown roll-rim

  Paxillus involutus

  Mistaken for

  Assorted brown gilled mushrooms; it was eaten as an edible in Europe for generations.

  How to tell

  Inrolled felty cap margin, gills that bruise dark brown and can be rubbed off the cap, growing under birch.

  What it does

  Sensitises the immune system over repeated meals, then one day triggers it to destroy the eater's own red blood cells. People have died after eating it safely for years.

• Can kill

  1 record nearby

  Deadly webcap

  Cortinarius rubellus

  Mistaken for

  Chanterelles and edible boletes gathered in the same conifer woods.

  How to tell

  Rusty-brown spore print and a cobwebby veil across the young gills that leaves a rusty band on the stem. Treat the whole webcap group as inedible — the genus is enormous and not reliably sorted in the field.

  What it does

  Destroys the kidneys, and does it slowly: symptoms can be two to three weeks after the meal, long after anyone connects the two.

• Hospital

  96 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

  10 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.

• Hospital7 records nearby

  Euphorbias (milk bushes, naboom, pencil tree)

  Euphorbia (the whole genus)

  Mistaken for

  Prickly pear and other cacti — many African euphorbias are spiny, leafless succulents that look exactly like cacti — and the pencil-stick hedges of Euphorbia tirucalli around farms and villages.

  How to tell

  Break a stem: a euphorbia bleeds white milky latex at once. Cacti such as prickly pear bleed clear or slimy sap, and their spines grow from small fuzzy cushions; euphorbia spines grow singly or in pairs, never from a cushion.

  What it does

  The latex burns skin and mouth, and in the eye can cause temporary blindness. Wear gloves and eye protection near a cut plant, and never rub your eyes.

• Hospital

  2 records nearby

  Common earthball

  Scleroderma citrinum

  Mistaken for

  Puffballs — it is round and it is on the ground.

  How to tell

  Cut it. An earthball has a thick hard rind and turns purple-black and marbled inside very early. An edible puffball is soft and pure white throughout, like a marshmallow.

  What it does

  Violent gastrointestinal illness; the spore dust irritates the lungs.

• Hospital2 records nearby

  Woolly milkcap

  Lactarius torminosus

  Mistaken for

  Saffron milk cap and the other orange milk caps eaten across Europe.

  How to tell

  A pinkish-salmon cap with darker rings and a shaggy, woolly, inrolled rim, white peppery milk, and always near birch. A saffron milk cap is carrot-orange with a smooth rim, bleeds carrot-orange milk, grows under pine and bruises green.

  What it does

  Raw or lightly cooked, it causes nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea — torminosus means ‘causing colic’. In Finland and Russia it is eaten only after parboiling and salting, which destroys the irritant.

• Hospital

  1 record nearby

  Panther cap

  Amanita pantherina

  Mistaken for

  The blusher and other brown Amanitas some foragers eat.

  How to tell

  Brown cap with white warts, a ring, and a distinct rim at the top of the bulbous base. The blusher stains pink-red where damaged; this does not.

  What it does

  A stronger dose of the same compounds as fly agaric, with more hospital admissions and occasional deaths.

• Unpleasant

  2 records nearby

  Buttercups

  Ranunculus (the whole genus)

  Mistaken for

  Young greens gathered in damp meadows, and marsh marigold.

  How to tell

  Glossy five-petalled yellow flowers; the leaves are acrid and burn the tongue when tasted raw.

  What it does

  Blisters the mouth and skin. Cooking destroys it, which is why marsh marigold is always boiled.

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.