Australia police charge woman with murder over mushroom lunch

[Farmer-Rick]

1. I wonder if it was an accident

People die every year from picking poisonous look-a-like mushrooms. They think they know what they are doing when foraging for wild mushrooms but they really don't. Every safe to eat wild mushroom has a poisonous look-a-like in the continental US. I bet in Australia they have even more poisonous mushrooms. I would never eat wild mushrooms picked by someone else. Those poor folks may have not had a choice.

The only way to be 100% sure that the mushroom you just picked isn't poisonous, is to look at the spores under a microscope. Or you can plant it yourself from known safe mycelium. That's what I like to do.