New mushroom species discovered in London grocery store

[n2doc]

What's a good place to look for undiscovered species? Remote rainforests? The deep ocean? What about your local grocery store?

That's where Bryn Dentinger and Laura Martinez-Suz, mycologists at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in London, recently discovered three new kinds of mushroom.

They were found in a package of dried porcini mushrooms from a grocery store in "southwest greater London" that the scientists tested using a technique called DNA barcoding. Dentinger had previously used the technique while researching mushrooms at the Royal Ontario Museum and the University of Toronto.

The technique involves matching the DNA profile of a sample to a database of known species in order to identify the sample. But in three out of 15 pieces tested from the porcini mushroom package, no match was found.

more

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/new-mushroom-species-discovered-in-london-grocery-store-1.2774326

[shraby]

1. Considering the reputation of mushrooms, that's not a good thing.

[Warpy]

2. Bad mushrooms usually have a nasty taste

and that's the main protection. However, if you see some pretty white button mushrooms, go fetch a mycologist to take a good look at them before you eat them. Amanita muscaria, the death cap or death angel doesn't have a nasty flavor to warn us off. They taste just like the button mushies we buy in the store.

I can tell them apart, but I need to cut them in half to do it. Even then, I'd run them by a qualified mycologist.

I'm wondering about the flavor of the mimic mushrooms. If they're good, chances are they've been around forever and people have been eating them with their porcini cousins just fine.

[Raster]

3. Wrong mushie...

I do believe you mean: Amanita ocreata, commonly known as the death angel. Muscarias are not pretty, white mushrooms. They are vividly colored red-ish with polka dots. Amanita muscaria, commonly known as the fly agaric or fly amanita, is a mushroom and psychoactive basidiomycete fungus, one of many in the genus Amanita.

[BrotherIvan]

4. Ahhhh!

Mushroom panic!!!!!!

[Enthusiast]

5. This is not good.