>>2620301There's a lot of families of mushroom that play nice. Some mushrooms you simply can't mistake for anything else, like chanterelles, hedgehogs. Then you have the nice families, easily mistakable mushrooms that you will mix up, but not with anything bad. Boletes, for example. We have 3 poisonous ones, but they're EXTREMELY distinctive (they're red), and rare here. Worst thing that can actually happen is you get one of the shit-tasting ones, and that's just a matter of taste testing them before you get the shit-taste all over the other mushrooms in the pan. If it passes the taste test, the worst that can happen with a bolete here is you get a merely good mushroom instead of a great one. Russulas are also nice here, same as boletes, no poison, but some taste like shit. I've heard there's something like 750 species of russula, so you can just forget about proper ID WITHIN the group, but in this case (again, here), it doesn't really matter.
Now, I'm in Scandinavia, so you should ignore anything specific I've just said. Get a book on your "local" mushrooms (not your town, like pacific north west or whatever), and they'll tell you what's worth picking, and what you could possibly mistake them for. And get a handle of the really bad mushrooms, like your Galerinas and death caps and such. I don't pick white button mushrooms. You really can't mistake them for a mature destroying angel, but you absolutely can with an unripe one, and then you're dead, or on dialysis for life. If there's one specific I can tell you, that's it. Keep in mind that mushrooms have a whole damn life-cycle, they're not all perfect ripe specimens. They'll be unripe, overripe, and some just fucking grow weird. Don't get cocky because you know what the Schwarzenegger of the species' look like. And don't get overwhelmed, there's a lot of (good) mushrooms that are unmistakable, and they get even more obvious after you've found them and laid your hands on them.
