When I was young in the Midwest, we collected morels (mushrooms); very distinctive. I have not collected mushrooms anywhere else I've lived. We had a family in the hospital in San Francisco - their mother thought the mushrooms were the same as the ones in the homeland and made the family a soup.

@lambjams@pluspora.com the morel (hah! fuck i'm hilarious) of the story: if in doubt, throw it out 😀) also: dont assume with the shroom. oh i have hundreds of such wisdoms, most of them summed up by "just buy some, fucksake" XD Each year we get warnings about the yellow-stainers which are easily mistaken for field mushrooms. Even though i kinda know what i'm looking at, i do not trust the fungi but love them anyway (such a neat...plant? creature? defs not a rock)
this pdf has some info for those of us in the more southern climes
agpath.com.au/wp/wp-content/up…

there's also an app for that - Ozfungi - and Fungimap on iNaturalist is handy for recording/possible ID inaturalist.org/projects/fungi…

and some disguise themselves as puffballs but they are not!

Some of those look tasty, but I think I'll just trust the folks that grow them.

re: puffballs... I can remember my dad and his friend collecting puffballs the size of footballs and eating them. I personally never collected puffballs, and in later years never saw any as big as when we were young (or maybe that was just a faulty memory??)

btw - in the US there is also the fan-shaped shelf fungi growing on logs (I think called turkey tail?) - I only recently found out was edible. Never ate one; not going to start unless tempted by an expert.

wise. very wise.