GLOVES NOT NECESSARY

[urbpan]

I got a little flack from some fellow mycophiles yesterday. It seems that several of my photos of mushrooms include my own gloved hand. My hand is gloved, I hasten to add, because I have taken these photos during the course of my job, at which I spend much of the day in nitrile gloves. Perhaps I am installing stable fly traps, which are basically huge strips of adhesive tape paper clipped to a cylinder--sticky work! Or maybe I'm handling feces or gore or poison etc. At any moment I could come across an interesting bit of fungus! Good thing I brought my camera. From now on the next step will be: remove those gloves, then take out the camera. But if the gloves aren't gory or gluey or tainted with toxins, what's the big deal?



"…Seriously: as a rabid mycological dismisinformationist… my discomfort with this photo is that your less myco-informed Facebook friends might infer that you're wearing the glove to protect you from absorbing mycotoxins through your skin: 'My friend… who knows quite a bit about wild mushrooms, wears vinyl gloves when handling them.'"In politics, we concern ourselves not only with impropriety but also with the *appearance* of impropriety; similarly, in education (and on here, I consider teaching my top priority) we concern ourselves not only with avoiding explicit misinformation but also with making any inaccurate implications, however inadvertent they may be. Throw down the gauntlet, I say!"© David William Fischer

Okay, David, I take your point.

To all who missed it, here it is again:

IT IS PERFECTLY SAFE TO HANDLE WILD MUSHROOMS. EVEN POISONOUS ONES. THE POISON WILL NOT COME THROUGH YOUR SKIN AND MAKE YOU SICK OR KILL YOU.

In fact, here's some comments to the above italicized remark:

During our ID sessions I'll often taste a mushroom (swirl and spit) if it's a useful keying tool. I swear half the group looks like they're going to burn me at the stake for heresy when I do that. -Another Mycologist

That's right, this other mushroom guy pops these things into his mouth and mixes the flesh with his saliva. And so far he is still alive, though he admits that the other people in his mushroom club look at him like a heretic.

Suffice it to say, handling and collecting wild mushrooms is quite safe. In the classes I teach I make this quite clear, although I do recommend that people wash their hands when they get home. If nothing else, to wash away the poison ivy, nematodes, and flesh-eating bacteria they may have picked up along the way.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Whoa, sticks things in his mouth and swirls them around?

I don't understand the principle behind that. The one time I ate poisonous mushrooms, they tasted delicious. That is, I didn't gain any extra knowledge by eating them. (I understand that "another mycologist" isn't eating them, just swirling them around in his mouth, but still...

okay, upon reflection, I suppose doing that would give you a more intense experience of the fragrance, and would add an experience of texture, etc.)


That is one massive puffball you've got there.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

To be clear: The taste of a mushroom is just another clue to its identity. By itself it doesn't tell you if the mushroom is edible or not. As you say, there are some poisonous mushrooms that taste pleasant (these are the ones that people eat a lot of and then die).

[miz-geek.livejournal.com]

Wait, mushrooms carry flesh-eating bacteria?

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Doesn't everything?

[morgi.livejournal.com]

Good thing the photo didn't show your red shirt or they'd think you were implying that mushroom-hunting is a fatal away mission.

[bosoxmom.livejournal.com]

I know that you are a person who does all sorts of weird stuff during your workday and that said, you may surely want to wear gloves. I never thought for a second that he's wearing gloves to protect himself from mushrooms.

I actually think they add to the pictures as the bright blue accents the shrooms rather nicely. That's the artist in me talking.

And when I am out in my yard messing about, I always have gloves on. I get contact dermatitis from stuff and I rarely touch stuff without gloves.

[ndozo.livejournal.com]

I agree with bosoxmom about the blue accenting the mushrooms. It's pretty. Also, I found a big puffball last week and cooked some of it and ate it. Weird texture, kind of tasteless, but it was the first time I ever ate a mushroom that I found. (Personal mushroom landmark. Woo.)