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Is that Oyster?


GaryZ

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Hi, everyone!


This is my first mushroom foraging, I found these mushroom on a dead fallen tree in the woods near Toronto. They look like Oyster, having decurrent gills, short stem, smooth, with no warts or scales, and white firm flesh, except for a little bit brown color.


Can anyone tell me if it is a real Oyster or not?


ps: is there any poisonous mushroom that look like Oyster? I don't want to get poisoned after eating them :)


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These look like Oysters to me. Seeing the entire stem would be helpful. Do you know what type of wood these were growing on?

Pleurocybella porrigens, Angel Wings, is a white mushroom that looks a lot like the Oyster. It grows on coniferous wood and has a pure white spore print. There is a report from Japan that people were seriously poisoned as a result of eating this type of mushroom. Older field guides list P. porrigens as edible. I used to eat them, before I learned about the incident in Japan.

Other Oyster-like mushrooms are Hohenbuehelia petaloides (distinctive shape), Lentinellus (taste acrid/bitter), Lentinus (tough flesh), Crepidotus (brown spore print), Panus (tough flesh, gills darker), Hysizygus (well-developed stem).

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Curious to follow-up on Gary's question.

I too live near Toronto and have picked what I was told are 'Elm Oyster' which I believe are Hysizygus.

Dave - are you aware of any mushroom that looks similar to that which are poisonous which can grow in our area?

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The only light-spored wood-inhabiting mushroom that I know about which has a questionable reputation is Pleurocybella porrigens, Angel Wings. This species had been considered edible for a long time. Before I heard about an incident of poisoning in Japan, I had eaten it throughout the years. White spore print, white fruit bodies, on coniferous wood.

Some types of true Oyster Mushrooms (Pleurotus) have white spore print, but most of the ones I have checked had pale lilac to smoky grayish spore print... light spore print colors.

Hysizygus is a possibility for the ones seen in this thread. But the shapes of the caps and the lateral stems/attachments to substrate favor a Pleurotus proposal.

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