Do you trust your ID.

[bushman]

Now you see if there was a pink fungi with blue dots and it was labled edible and I found it in the guide....and made a pos ID, I would still be wary of prepping it for fear of getting poisoned.
How do you make a pos ID and then overcome the urge not to test ?

[Brewforagegrow]

I think everyone will have different ideas on how best to do this, but my first pointer would be not to eat it the first time you've found it, and for me even a 0.1% element of doubt means it doesn't get eaten (Ive still never eaten a foraged agaricus as I'm not confident on my ID, yet I've eaten 30+differwnt edible mushrooms)

Take a spore print. Ties back to not eating it, but will often be the deciding factor in confirming an ID
Never rely on just one book.

Many books will have notable lookalikes, go through the same ID steps on those to rule it out.

Ask the opinion of an expert. I personally wouldn't go by that alone, but many mushroom people can tell you what it can be mistaken for etc

[cab]

Never really think about it to be honest.

Distinguishing features of fungi are every bit as easy as for plants or animals, you just need to learn what they are. And that includes smell, habitat, texture of different parts of it, and all aspexts of its appearance.

Take, for example, the giant puffball. Its kind of like a big round ball. Its white through. It might in fact be a football you spot in the woods, but thats easy to tell. There is nothing you can mistake it for, at all, ever.

Take the good old fashioned field mushroom. Pink to brown gills, mushroomy smell, white, maybe turning ever so slightly reddish on the base of the stipe on cutting, ring, detached gills, brown spore print if you must go so far... Its a mushroom, it could be possible to mistake a yellow staining mushroom for it, but that turns bright yellow on cutting, it stinks of carbolic, its got a different sheen to the cap, its a very different critter.

Then think of the parasols - three species of big edible ones here, big floppy white gills, scaly shaggy cap, white swollen base, darkening stem when cut (reddish brown colour forming with time)... Well, add all those features up and there isn't anything you could mistake for it that'll harm you. White gills themselves are found in amanitas but none have the fibrous stipe and shaggytop, and they come from volvas rather than having swollen bases. And they're not the same spongy, airy texture...

There isn't any kind of hard and fast rule about ID'ing to eat other than work out what you're looking at. Get a book, get several if you like, you can learn that way - but you'll learn more going out a few times with an experienced picker.

As for overcoming the fear, I've been picking since before I was writing, so I can't really remember the fear

[bushman]

Thanks for the info, will have to bone up on fungi....and get a decent field guide.