Foraging in Madrid

Know these first

What can hurt you around Madrid in October

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

• Can kill86 records nearby

  Thorn apple (Datura)

  Datura (the whole genus)

  Mistaken for

  Young plants come up among amaranth (morogo) and other wild greens in maize fields and gardens, and children eat the seeds.

  How to tell

  A coarse, rank-smelling plant with large, irregularly toothed leaves, big upright trumpet flowers, white or purple, and a spiny, walnut-sized capsule packed with small dark seeds. Amaranth has smooth-edged leaves and only bristly flower spikes.

  What it does

  Atropine and scopolamine: dry mouth, hot flushed skin, a racing heart, huge pupils, then delirium and hallucinations that can last a day or more. It has killed adults and children.

• Can kill8 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 kill

  4 records nearby

  Small parasols (Lepiota)

  Lepiota (the whole genus)

  Mistaken for

  Shaggy parasol and true parasol mushroom, which are larger relatives worth eating.

  How to tell

  The dangerous ones are small — a cap under about 8 cm — with brown scales on a pale ground and a ring. Size is the whole distinction, and it is not a comfortable one, so the safe rule is to leave every small scaly parasol alone.

  What it does

  Several small Lepiota species carry amatoxins and have killed adults. There is no benefit that justifies the risk.

• Can kill

  2 records nearby

  Death cap

  Amanita phalloides

  Mistaken for

  Paddy straw mushrooms, young Agaricus, and anything picked as a 'field mushroom'.

  How to tell

  Greenish to olive cap with a faint metallic sheen, white gills, a ring, and a sac-like volva at the base. Introduced with European trees and now widespread, especially under oaks.

  What it does

  Responsible for most fatal mushroom poisonings worldwide. Half a cap can kill an adult; symptoms start only after the damage is done.

• Hospital34 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

  13 records nearby

  Pokeweed

  Phytolacca americana

  Mistaken for

  Its shoots are a traditional southern green, and the berries look like elderberries.

  How to tell

  Thick magenta stem and berries in a drooping raceme, each with a flattened top. Elderberries sit in a flat-topped cluster on green stems.

  What it does

  Roots, seeds and mature plant are toxic; the young shoots are eaten only after several changes of boiling water, and people are hospitalised every year for skipping that.

• Hospital

  9 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

  Dwarf elder (danewort)

  Sambucus ebulus

  Mistaken for

  Elder — it carries the same flat white flower heads and black berries.

  How to tell

  Not a shrub: soft green stems 1–2 m (3–6 ft) tall that die back to the ground every winter, growing in dense patches from creeping roots, with leaves that smell foul when crushed and berry heads held upright. Elder is woody, with corky bark, and its ripe berry heads droop.

  What it does

  Every part is poisonous, the seeds especially: vomiting and diarrhoea.

• Hospital

  4 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.

• Hospital4 records nearby

  Yellow stainer

  Agaricus xanthodermus

  Mistaken for

  Field, horse and wood mushrooms — about half the poisonings among people who gather Agaricus mushrooms are this one.

  How to tell

  Scratch the cap edge or cut the base of the stem: it turns an instant, bright chrome-yellow that later fades brown, and smells of ink or carbolic soap — more strongly as it cooks. Edible field and horse mushrooms smell pleasant and yellow only slowly and faintly, if at all.

  What it does

  Sweating, flushing, severe cramps, vomiting and diarrhoea. Some people eat it without trouble, which keeps its reputation muddled; it is banned from sale in Italy.

• Hospital

  3 records 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.

• Hospital

  2 records 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.

• Hospital2 records nearby

  Mediterranean jack-o’-lantern

  Omphalotus olearius

  Mistaken for

  Chanterelles, in southern Europe.

  How to tell

  Bright orange clusters growing from stumps and buried roots — especially of olive trees — with sharp, true, crowded gills running down the stem, and the same orange right through the flesh. A chanterelle grows singly from the soil, has blunt forking ridges, and is pale inside.

  What it does

  Illudin S: severe cramps, vomiting and diarrhoea. Not normally fatal.

• Hospital2 records nearby

  Fibrecaps (Inocybe)

  Inocybe (the whole genus)

  Mistaken for

  Little brown and buff mushrooms picked in lawns, parks and woods by people after fairy ring champignons, St George’s mushroom or anything ‘meadow-ish’.

  How to tell

  Small brown or straw-coloured caps, often with a pointed centre and radiating fibres that split at the rim, gills turning grey-brown to snuff-brown, a brown spore print, and often a spermatic or green-corn smell. There are hundreds of species, separated only under a microscope — leave every one.

  What it does

  Many contain muscarine: sweating, salivation, tears, cramps, blurred vision and a slow heart within 15–30 minutes. Atropine reverses it; a large dose can stop breathing.

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.