Foraging in Tallinn

Know these first

What can hurt you around Tallinn in October

8 species on our hazard list have been recorded near here this month, 3 of which can kill a healthy adult. Learn these before you learn anything you intend to eat.

• Can kill

  5 records nearby

  Lily of the valley

  Convallaria majalis

  Mistaken for

  Ramps and wild garlic — it comes up in the same woods at the same time, with the same shape of leaf.

  How to tell

  Crush a leaf. Ramps smell unmistakably of onion and garlic; lily of the valley smells green and of nothing else. If it does not smell of onion, it is not a ramp. Ramps also have a reddish-purple stalk base.

  What it does

  Cardiac glycosides that disturb the heart's rhythm. Every part is toxic, including the water cut flowers have stood in.

• Can kill

  1 record 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.

• Can kill

  1 record 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.

• 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

  2 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.

• Hospital1 record 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.

• Hospital1 record 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.

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.