thanks, dd.

fascinating reading.

Not 20 yards from where we throw up Deer Camp every year in Northern Kentucky are stands of both sumac and sassafras. And elsewhere in our neck of woods are everything from ground nuts to cattails to blackberries to raspberries to wood sorrel to persimmons to walnuts and hickories (and of course a half dozen species of oaks).

In the unlikely event we were stranded there and forbidden to kill and eat meat (deer, turkey, squirrel, rabbit, groundhog, dove, grouse, etc. etc.), we surely wouldn't starve.

-- kypaddler

Anybody eat inner pine bark? heh heh

Yeah, you shouldn't be picking mushrooms unless you know what you're doing.

There are only a few deadly poisonous ones out there, but there are some. Even if eating the wrong mushroom might not kill you, it could cause permanent liver damage, or you could just end up puking your guts out. On the other hand, you may (also) experience a transformative hallucinogenic experience, but I have no personal experience with that.

There is something called a "false morel" which I think is in the poisonous-but-not-deadly category. To me they don't look much like real morels, but apparently there are enough people who make the mistake.

All Europeans from Russians to Italians pick wild mushrooms. If you're culturally deprived, you might find a local university or community college that offers courses. There are lots of good books out there as well: Orson K. Miller's is a classic, and David Arora's is good too. But it's nice to have someone take you out and show you.

In addition to morels (delicious but fairly rare, in my experience), there are some other excellent eating mushrooms which are common in late summer and are easy to identify, such as lactarius deliciosus, various boletes, chanterelles, oyster mushrooms, and honey mushrooms. Though I'm not specially keen on them, some people like puffballs and coral fungi too.

Maybe the chicken-leg fogs in Q would taste even more like chicken!

I had fried frogs leggs once in a vietnamese restauraunt.  Mmmm tasty!  I commented on how crispy the batter was.  That's not batter, that the skin.  Mmmm tasty!