Longmire Lawn Ornaments

Day 8: It has been a banner year for the Amanitas at Longmire! Dozens of specimens are apparent throughout the housing area and in the lawn at the back of the Administration Building where I work. You can't mistake them for anything else (and that's my lead-in to today's post).

I write a weekly article on the Park's Facebook page and while it generally features some of the rarer wildflowers or lichens, I occasionally venture outside my particular fields into the dangerous territory where the limits of my knowledge are stretched, specifically mycology. I generally steer clear of edible mushrooms lest my posts encourage harvesting, and even when I do publish a photo of an edible species, I emphasize how risky it is for the amateur to gather fungi without an expert's help. Most recently, I posted a photo of what I believed to be a Pholiota species, but was corrected by someone with greater knowledge. Caught out, I chose not to delete the post, but to turn it into a "teaching moment."

Ironically, the subject of my article was not the mushroom itself, but the perils of mushroom poisoning as a result of misidentification. If I had to make a mistake publicly, it could not have happened under better circumstances. I accepted the correction gracefully, and thanked the contributor for expanding my knowledge. The "Pholiota" was properly identified as an edible Armillaria, so although my misidentification denied me the experience of savouring "honey mushrooms," my error was on the side of caution, supporting my own advice: "If you're not 105% sure, don't eat it."

Unlike what happens if you consume an Amanita or other poisonous mushroom, you'll survive confessing to a mistake with no long-term ill effects. Even though it is embarrassing, there is no shame in admitting you are wrong. The shame is in persisting in an error.