I used to see these growing everywhere in the Seattle area, but on recent visits, it seems that they're less prevalent. I wonder if the city has been clearing them away.
> It’s the deadliest plant in North America, deadlier ounce by ounce than any mushroom
Mushrooming is a curious hobby. Common advice is "it's okay to bite/taste any mushroom"... but you're never to swallow until you've got a positive identification, and never ever while you're out in the field even if you think you're sure.
But plants are wicked dangerous by comparison, which really bucks common perceptions about plant/mushroom foraging. For example, simply touching wolfsbane can kill!
Even one of this mushroom will basically put your liver into necrosis and slowly kill you. There is no effective remedy in modern medicine apart from emergency liver transplant.
It also looks much like the common and delicious champignon.
My grandfather and dad used to do that when we went mushroom-ing with the whole extended family in the woods.
Us kids looked at them in horror. However they already knew most of the poisonous species and never touched those. The “bite test” was to tell between just a few species. It was still scary to see.
FWIW, I've never been so courageous as to try this (even when I know it's a chanterelle, I can wait 'til I get home) -- but north america has it's fair share of both destroying angels (a. virosa) and death caps (a. phalloides) and I've gotten that advice from local experts. OTOH folks who know what they're doing still make fatal or near-fatal mistakes... I'm not nearly enough of an expert to trust the seemingly-cavalier expert advice ;)
Where I live the common advice is to ever forage for non-white edible mushrooms only. And of course still always do a positive identification with the help of a modern illustrated edible mushroom picking guidebook. In addition to identification instructions for good mushrooms, they include references and pictures of every known similar-looking non-edible mushroom, so you can do the positive identification.
But even with pictures, good guidebook and caution, experts still advice against picking white edible mushrooms at all. The risk of accidentally picking a destroying angel is not worth it, as any forest that has e.g. champignons (Agaricus) is going to have other good, non-white mushrooms as well.
The plant is featured in Harry Potter in the very first book, but it completely understates the actual danger of the plant. At least based on your link, and how even touching it can be fatal.
For those wondering, it's the first potion class in book 1.
In The Prisoner of Azkaban it's mentioned that the potion is particularly complex to make, though it doesn't actually go as far as to explain the reason behind the difficulty in making it.
> It’s the deadliest plant in North America, deadlier ounce by ounce than any mushroom
Mushrooming is a curious hobby. Common advice is "it's okay to bite/taste any mushroom"... but you're never to swallow until you've got a positive identification, and never ever while you're out in the field even if you think you're sure.
But plants are wicked dangerous by comparison, which really bucks common perceptions about plant/mushroom foraging. For example, simply touching wolfsbane can kill!
https://monicawilde.com/monkshood-wolfsbane-poisoning/