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by vidarh 1627 days ago
Have a look at [1]. One is edible without special considerations, the other is potentially lethal if you don't corrently boil it in a well-ventilated room first (and take care not to breathe in too much of what you're boiling off). People are regularly hospitalised for doing stupid stuff like standing over the pot. Most advice I've seen tell people to not eat even properly prepared gyromitra too often (at least one book on foraging tells people to avoid more than one meal a year of it).

If you're experienced and aware of the existence of gyromitra, you'll probably do just fine. But I totally understand if people don't feel confident that they'd make the right call. The colours looks obviously different on those pictures, but try looking at some other pictures to get an idea of the colour variations.

I don't want to put people off foraging for mushrooms, because I absolutely agree with you that many of the tastiest kinds are rarely available without foraging (more often available at markets than in stores, but inconsistently certainly; even gyromitra can be bought at markets in some countries), but better that people are well aware of the potential for misidentification so they seek proper advice and learn how to distinguish them first (and are aware that the risk factors varies greatly between regions depending on which similar mushrooms exists there).

[1] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Mushrooms-Gyromitra-Escu...