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You found a generic-looking white mushroom, congrats! But should you put it on your pizza or will it kill you stone dead? This photo is a good way to illustrate why you should talk to a human being instead of a computer when making life or death decisions.
A knowledgeable person would notice that the photo cuts off the bottom of the stem - this is important. If it has a club-like swelling (called the volva), you don't have a button mushroom.
A knowledgeable person would ask you to take a spore print or even just look at the gills. Deadly Amanitas have white spores, button mushrooms have brown ones.
These are two simple ways to protect yourself against mushroom poisoning that aren't necessarily foolproof - people poison themselves with Amanita phalloides a lot because they look like Volvariellas, which are closely related and have a lot of the same features, but if you adhere to the rule of not eating any white-spored mushrooms with swelling at the base you can go a long way to protect yourself. But the AI won't tell you that, because it's not built for context, it's built by people who are good at sounding like they know everything and is made in the image of its creators.
The more I learn about mushroom foraging, the less I want to ever do it again, even in my childhood home backyard. The meme is real, fuck off with that russian roulette
I know people who have foraged for years without having any problems. It's not Russian roulette if you take the time to learn from people who are knowledgeable about the area and smart about what you choose to eat. I wouldn't advocate it as a hobby unless you're genuinely interested in mycology (there are much easier ways to get food), but it won't kill you if you educate yourself.
Mate, my family picked mushrooms for three generations in the same rural area before a university proffesor told me "dude, you have been eating Chlorophyllum molybdites for years" and that's where I found the Lepiota meme and for fuck sakes if its true.
Sure we always boiled them a lot so none of us got sicl enough to suspect anything, but fuck
I love traditional foraging because of things like that, where would we be today if settlers didn't tell everyone "hey fuck your ages-developed methods, mushrooms are poison, lets all eat corn syrup and beef or we're going to hell."
The difference between a Pole and a German. One goes foraging every autumn and the other is afraid of even looking at a podgrzybek.
It's good to hook up w people in your area. A lot of species that are edible are really distinctive, and you can just stick to those. I won't fuck with white ones period, at least around here the amanitas are the only ones that will REALLY mess you up, others will give you a rough ride but they won't kill you.
The only rule my family had was avoid the black gilled ones with smooth silver top that grow on cow dung and stick to the ones with white gills and stem ring and with shaggy top. And always boil it.
The proffesor told me "as rule of thumb I wouldstick to the black ones"
Luckly we don't have Quercuses around
Idk what to say other than my original point was that relying on software that's incapable of reasoning is inferior to asking someone who would know what questions to ask before making the determination that a mushroom is safe and that I've known folks who got knowledgeable about an area and were able to forage successfully by focusing on only mushrooms that could be positively ID'd and taking steps to ensure they knew what they were eating.
Yes, yes. My point was that I'm still scared from that episode.
It's not Russian roulette if you take the time to learn from people who are knowledgeable about the area and smart about what you choose to eat.
To me, personally, pretty sure this boils down to russian roulette