Do you collect mushrooms in your country? Poles in Poland do.

I've always wonder it is only a polish custom to go to forest with family looking for mushrooms. My dad always took us in summer (never in fall though) for grzybobranie

(and by the way we were collecting blueberries and raspberries also). Its like dad taking his offspring for fishing... in my family instead of river for fish we went to forest for mushrooms ;)

So is it only polish custom?

Hey as long as it's free poles will do it :) That reminds me I got to pick up some pickled mushrooms from a polish deli.

Too dry here to collect anything right now. Come to think of it I haven't seen much of chanterelles (kurki) this year either. :-(

Every year during the summer we head up to northern Ontario where my uncle lives.The place is called "Kaszuby".Yes---we have Kaszubiaky that settled here 150 years ago,Well-up here they have mushrooms in the forest that are edible and we love to go picking and then frying them up.Very tasty.

Only the magic variety.

I remember we used to go picking mushrooms in near Bangor, Michigan and Rockford, IL.

I do loves the ways my uncle cooked and it is so good.

no.. amercicas pick mushrooms and blueberries and whatever..

I never went to pick mushrooms here in the USA and I didn't like to that in Poland. Anyway, I'd have to trip over a mushroom to find it :) However, I enjoyed picking pure, organic blueberries in the forest! Oh, the taste. You can not even imagine it if you never had them.

Now, I'm stuck with some blueberry farms in Michigan, oh well. They are pretty tasty too and fresher than from the store.
Last year pictures and that's how it works!

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I bet that is nice.

the wild blueberries here aren't the same as the ones in PL tho.. they are white on the inside not like the ones in PL that are actually blue on the outside and inside as well. i've picked bunches of wild ones in MN and MI and they are about to start coming in here at the end of July and early August. Both states have a lot of them.

the main mushroom picked in the states is the morel.

there are others here too but just not picked that much.. a friend of mine used to go to northern OH and maybe WI to pick boletes (borowik). i have also seen chanterelles (kurki) here in the states but they are pretty rare.

this mushroom picking always scared the sh1t out of me. One wrong mushroom and poof! a whole family can die. There were always horror stories whispered on the subject.

you just have to be smart and know how to id them which is actually not that hard.

it takes a lot skill and knowledge to pick wild mushrooms. There are plenty of poisonous mushrooms. I never heard of anybody dying, but there could be some serious belly disturbance if you know what I mean...it is important to really know the stuff.

here in the states yes but in PL that is very common where folk croak from eating the ones that they shouldn't have. every year they make the news in the fall, when the PL mushroom picking season is.

really? I have to ask my family if this happens a lot. I never heard of anybody dying in my times in Poland and I LIVED IN THE KIELECKI FOREST! :) Full of mushrooms too.

the way I remember, it was a family affair. Grandpa, kids, everybody was picking mushrooms.. And not like here, one or two kind of mushrooms, I remember there were at least 10 different mushrooms that were good, and a hundred very similar ones that will kill you. Some of them from one lick.

Yeah, that's why family never collect this one. There is other very confusing mushroom when its young and not grew up - Kania:

Some ppl mistaken it for muchomor sromotnikowy.


Well I heard that in Poland there are really few poisoning mushrooms. Most of them is just bitter in taste thats why some species are not collected.

There are only few species collected and dont need too much knowledge to pick mushrooms, just to abide the old rule: if you are not sure its better to throw out a muchroom from your basket.

Most popular mushrooms in Poland:

Kurka (pieprznik jadalny)



Prawdziwek (borowik szlachetny)



Podgrzybek



Kozak (koźlarz)

kozak

Kozak czerwony

Gołąbek zielonawy



Maślak

Rydz

Gąska zielona



Smardz

Do not pick up smardz under any circumstances!
It's rare and protected by law!

I dont. I have never seen a smardz in my life, neither my father who is a "specialist" but I heard thats a mushroom ppl were picking it up.

I've never understand this craze over picking mushrooms. Makes no sense to me. But you kno, you've gotta have some pasion in your life they say :)

That is a lovely pastime, I often take my Girls Blackberry picking then they bake Muffins. Mushroom picking is not something people tend to do here and I think that there are only a few deadly poisonous varieties.

that's not true.. there are many that are deadly

The most common example is the szatan myth. There is a borowik szatański a deadly poisoning mushroom but only in mountains and its really rare. The common mushroom called by locals szatan is just an uneatable bitter in taste mushroom goryczak żółciowy

there are mushrooms similar to kurka and rydz that are inedible.. not sure if they are poisonous though.. but there are other examples too..

i never knew that there were smardz mushrooms in PL.. there are so many of them here.. when i lived in the country i would find 2-3kg every evening after work.. btw. they grow in the spring only and there are at least half a dozen varieties of them.. good eats too. :)

i know what u mean. Once I pick up whole basket of it, ooops! ;)
(they are yellow-orange and have quite round hat not like kurki)


Londora said its extinctive species and protected. I never found any smardz in my area.

Lots of people love to pick mushrooms in Russia. Usually it looks like as a family event. But, unfortunately, not so many young people who grown in cities really know some poisonous mushrooms that is similar to edible ones. So, usually all what was picked shown to some "babushka" later, and often half of all what was picked goes to waste at once. ;)

We had some prety large military range closed for general public near place where I live before. We used to know a nice hidden hole in the fence and where guard usually reside, so we picked lots of mushrooms there. ;) Once was caught by guard, it looked in our bags with some mushrooms, laughed and just told us to avoid to pick or step to any unfamiliar items that may be on the ground. We talked little bit, and it turned out that they guarding mostly moving training targets installations after some gypsies attempted to stole copper wiring and electric motors and sell copper to local scrap metal dealers.

yes i read that.. maybe eventually there will be more.. although their spores sprout only after 7 years or something.. supposedly..

and by country i meant USA country, btw.

We used to pick blueberries back home in Sweden, usually the whole family attended. The wild blueberries I've picked in North Carolina, Tennessee and Alaska were exactly like the blueberries in Sweden, maybe a tad larger due to the higher humidity levels.

As far as mushrooms, I hear growing your own shrooms is gaining in popularity, probably not a family event though ;)

i think it's a tradition in poolish.but i heard about fishing of father and son but never heard about collecting mushrooms.

@zetigrek
and where is a photo of miodownik?

btw thanx for photos, that reminds me when i've been younger, i used to collect shroms and blueberries in the forest (usually in Kaczory, near Piła)- but i've never eat them (i.e. mushrooms)- because they are nasty (they are good only in bigos or zapiekanka)