Foraging in Zurich

Know these first

What can hurt you around Zurich in October

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

• Can kill19 records nearby

  Autumn crocus (meadow saffron)

  Colchicum autumnale

  Mistaken for

  Wild garlic — its leaves come up in spring in the same damp meadows and woodland edges.

  How to tell

  In spring, a stalkless tuft of a few broad, glossy, strap-like leaves wrapped round one another, often with a green seed pod in the middle, and no smell of garlic. Wild garlic leaves rise one by one on their own thin stalks and smell strongly of garlic. The pink, crocus-like flowers come in autumn with no leaves at all.

  What it does

  Colchicine: vomiting and diarrhoea 4 to 12 hours later, then failure of the heart, lungs, kidneys and bone marrow over the following days. There is no antidote, and foragers who ate it as wild garlic have died.

• Can kill

  18 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.

• Can kill

  16 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 kill13 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 kill11 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 kill6 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 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 kill3 records nearby

  Deadly nightshade

  Atropa bella-donna

  Mistaken for

  Bilberries and cherries — its sweet, shiny black berries tempt children.

  How to tell

  A branching herb up to 1.5 m (5 ft) with dull purple, bell-shaped flowers and single, glossy black berries the size of a cherry, each sitting in a green five-pointed star. Bilberries grow on a knee-high shrub; black nightshade’s berries are smaller, dull and in clusters.

  What it does

  Atropine and scopolamine: dry mouth, wide pupils, racing heart, fever, delirium and hallucinations. A few berries can kill a child.

• Hospital

  104 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

  62 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

  12 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.

• Hospital9 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.

• Hospital6 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

  5 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

  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.

• Unpleasant

  4 records nearby

  Common buckthorn

  Rhamnus cathartica

  Mistaken for

  Chokecherries and wild blueberries — it is everywhere in eastern hedgerows.

  How to tell

  Thorn-tipped twigs, leaves with curved veins running to the tip, and black berries with three or four seeds. Chokecherry has one stone.

  What it does

  A powerful laxative, which is where the name comes from. Not dangerous, but a memorable mistake.

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.