Last week, the California Department of Public Health issued a blanket advisory warning people against foraging and eating wild mushrooms after 20 people were hospitalized and one died from a toxic mushroom known as the “death cap.” Professional foragers based in Northern California say CDPH missed the most important part of the message: education.
“It's very popular to forage,” said Steffan Terje, a chef and the owner of Wine Forest Wild Foods, a Napa-based wholesale foraging company. “It's a cool thing to do, but you really have to educate yourself.”
“The first mushroom everyone should learn is the death cap and the destroying angel, the deadly amanitas,” said professional forager Bryan Jessop. “That's what people are teaching in classes; that's what's in all these guide books,” he said.
“That's what anyone will tell you: Anything resembling a death cap — so a white or sort of greenish tinted mushroom — avoid. There are edible amanitas, but those are really just for the experts.”
The death cap mushroom, or Amanita phalloides, is particularly dangerous because it can be easily confused with Amanita calyptroderma, the Coccora. Foragers discourage amateurs against seeking the Coccora due to this resemblance. Surface knowledge may prove to be insufficient, given it has two different color phases between spring and fall, and that it can resemble other amanitas during its egg versus button phase.
“There is no room for error when considering amanitas for the table. Visiting a website or reading a book is insufficient information upon which to risk your life,” the Bay Area Mycological Society states clearly on its website. The Society recommends having your mushrooms checked by a local expert, especially the first several times you collect them.
While expert foragers may allow themselves to indulge in safe, edible amanitas varieties such as the Coccora or Springtime amanitas, Amanita vellosa, Jessop says a consumer will never encounter one. “You can't buy them and you'll never be served them at restaurants or at the Ferry Building. All the wild food companies just don't want to popularize amanitas in the mushroom industry because then somebody might get mixed up at some point and slip [a poisonous] one in.”
It’s unclear what those who have fallen ill this year from consuming death caps were in search of. While the death caps most closely resemble the Coccora, a similarly plausible mistake has arisen with paddy straw mushrooms, or Volvariella volvacea. These mushrooms grow in East and Southeast Asia on rice straw beds and are picked immature, during their button phase. While the paddy straw mushrooms have different characteristics than the death caps at maturity, the two mushrooms cannot be distinguished in the button stage. This mix-up has led to tragedy before in the Bay Area and elsewhere.
Death caps arrived on imported plants from Europe in the 1930s and 1940s. Since then, they’ve become extremely invasive. Their proliferation, combined with apps like iNaturalist that allow anyone to share the coordinates of mushroom plots, could be attracting amateurs who think they’ve hit the jackpot.
But iNaturalist is also a great educational tool, says Dr. Gordon Walker, a Napa-based scientist and the author of Dr. Fun Guy's Passport to Kingdom Fungi (Ten Speed Press, 2025). In fact, it’s the only AI-powered mushroom identification service he’d ever consider using, he said, whereas services like ChatGPT or worse yet, Google Lens, are prone to dangerous misidentifications. Because iNaturalist indexes on local species and is curated by other experts, it can serve as a reliable tool for foragers.
It can’t be your only tool, though. “If you're going to eat something, you need to get at least three points of confirmation of your identification,” he recommends. This can be an ID on iNaturalist, uploading a photo to a local group or forum of sorts, cross-checking photos and characteristics in a guidebook or other printed reference, and sending a photo out to foraging friends for confirmation.
“Your level one wizard can't go fight the dragon,” Walker said. “Stick with what is in your wheelhouse and learn things slowly. It's never a bad thing to forage a mushroom, bring it home and then not end up eating it.”
Walker, Terje, and Jessop all emphasized the importance of community in foraging. Many foragers learn the ropes from one another, and it makes for a tight-knit and passionate community. When I spent the afternoon foraging with Jessop, he was sure to emphasize the impact that mentorship had on his foraging career. An expert will guide you through the weeds, as conditions including the stage of growth, surrounding plants, and the current season will influence a mushroom’s appearance and smell. Terje recommends starting with your local mycological society for mentorship.
“If you're not educated enough, there’s real danger in forging,” said Terje. “It's not something that you do over a week and then you're proficient; this is something you build on.”
Terje has been hunting and eating wild mushrooms since his childhood in Sweden. Like learning to ride a bike with training wheels, he recommends starting your foraging journey with some basic, straightforward (and still delicious) mushrooms such as winter chanterelles, yellow feet, and hedgehog mushrooms.
“They're so distinct, and there are no look-alikes that are going to kill you,” he said.
Walker fears that the CDPH’s warning was insufficient for keeping people healthy. “It's sort of like abstinence-only education. People are still going to go forage. It's not smart to tell them not to,” he said. “You have to teach people the basics of how to do it safely.”
The foragers say CDPH’s blanket advisory could needlessly scare people from engaging with local, sustainable food sources.
“Say somebody who has never skied before goes up to Lake Tahoe and the first run they do is down a black diamond slope and they break both legs: Are you going to close the whole mountain?” Terje wondered.
“I think instead of saying ‘don't forage,’ it’s important to promote education.”
