h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I do not pick mushrooms. A childhood spent being told, 'DON'T TOUCH THAT TOADSTOOL' will do that.

Oh, that, and the fact that my biology professor said it was never safe in the US. And that a personal friend of his - who was a mycologist - perished with his entire family due to a mushroom incident. I think we have too many varieties in this ecosystem.

I know a woman whose first husband died from mushroom poisoning.

Her second husband was bludgeoned to death. He wouldn't eat his mushrooms.

I'd be wary of eating Russian mushrooms, because they tend to store radiation filtered from the ground.

On that basis I'd be more worried about the Ukranian ones.

What's fascinating are the fungi they found growing inside the reactor at Chernobyl. They seem to transform gamma radiation into nutrition in a similar way with sunlight via chlorophyll. I think they are still researching how it actually works.

But yeah, those ones, at least, I wouldn't fancy eating...

Gah, I'll repeat the sentence I mangled:

They seem to transform gamma radiation into nutrition in a similar way *green plants do* with sunlight via chlorophyll.

This time of year I eat tree leaves. Young hawthorn and beech are delicious, and lime leaves can be eaten right through summer, but are at their best in the spring.

Froghans (bilberries) grow on the mountains. If I go past some when climbing I'll graze.

When I was a kid, we always picked blackberries, elderflowers (for lemonade "elderflower champagne"), and sometimes elderberries (for wine) and dandelions (ditto).

I'll also eat sloes from hedgerows and a couple of other things. Wood sorrel is good for grazing on. So is actual sorrel. I remember my granny made a sorrel soup once when we were camping in the west of Ireland, somewhere near the Cliffs of Moher.

TRiG.

We were never big jam eaters in our house, so the blackberries tended to go into crumbles. Jam sometimes, but usually crumbles. Rarely pies.

TRiG.

I've never heard of eating tree leaves.

Before I was confinded to a WC (wheelchair! not the other sort!!) I used to like nothing better than going out and walking and choosing what to forage. If I ever find anything which is wild when I go to the market then I buy it straight away.

I never knew you had so many "disguise"!. But I think of our early friendship when this website first started and remember the friends I made with great nostalgia. I am so pleased because one of them has replied.

I just add my age after my nickname, Unfortunately itseems to anger many who apppear to feel that I should no longer be capable of reasonably intelligent membership.

Anyway, thank you for having inadvertently come onto my screen even though in a "disguise".

AlsoRan 83
Friday 27th April. 2012 8.05 GMT

@TRiG:

You can't eat too much sorrel because it's high in oxalic acid. So is spinach - to a lesser extent. That is why it sometimes makes your teeth feel funny: it's poisoned some of the nerves in your tongue.

@Dmitri:

Young beech leaves can be eaten in salads or sandwiches. Or they are steeped in brandy to make 'noyau', a liquer.

Russia is quite a big country. The Ukraine is the biggest country in Europe and just the European part of Russia is bigger than that. Moscow is, therefore, really quite a long way away from Chernobyl, if that is the radiation problem, although I did one look out of a Moscow window and say 'what's that building?' and my host said, 'that's the nuclear power station training unit' which was a tad worrying. Anyway, if you are worried about Russian street food and radiation it's the watermelons you've got to watch. Apparently.

Oh and regarding tree leaves, my Grandad used to make oak leaf wine.

Actually (sorry) I just looked it up. Moscow is 431 miles from Chernobyl. Deary me. Is that close? I can't decide.

Size is relative - it's about one and a half times the length of Ireland, but nothing on a Russian or Canadian scale...

...and a Manxman would describe it in light years

Well, it's a bit further than London to Edinburgh and twice as far as London to Paris. And in any case as they say that the air pollution in Moscow is like smoking five packets of cigs a day then...

I planted sorrel last year. Grew like a weed. Sorrel soup. Mmmmmmmmmm.

With regard to Chernobyl the critical factors are not distance but whether an area was under the plume of radioactive material and received high levels of fallout combined with the local soil conditions - water logged acidic soils tend to hold onto some of the radioactive particles - this is why Lapland, the English Lake District and north Wales were badly effected.

This does raise the issue, though, of how safe foraged food is to eat. Or is it just a matter of common sense?

Well...with farmed food, there's less chance of poisoning yourself by eating the wrong plant accidentally. But farmed plants and animals live on the same soil as the wild plants on the other side of the hedgerow. They aren't foolproof against widespread pollution. And while there are food standards, and government regulations about food, checks happen on a random basis. I think we all know that things make their way into our supermarkets which legally ought not to.