Eating strange mushrooms

Can you tell the difference between
these two? If not, then experimenting
with strange mushrooms is not for you.

About once a year, I eat a new kind of mushroom, both to increase the range of collected edible species, and out of curiosity, as all mushrooms have different taste and texture, and therefore can be used in varying recipes.

But what gives me confidence to eat strange mushrooms despite the constant barrage of news stories of people getting poisoned? Here is a list of handy tips:

1) Always be sure of the identity of mushroom you are planning to consume
2) Know the List of deadly fungi by heart and never eat anything that resembles these mushrooms
3) Particularly, never eat Amanitas - these account for 95% of all fungi-related deaths
4) Always make sure it's properly cooked
5) Never eat more than a small quantity the first time
6) Always keep a sample of your mushroom in the fridge, in case you do make a mistake and the toxin needs to be identified.

Observing these guidelines minimises the risk but there are still no absolute certainties. The rules make it highly unlikely that you'll get seriously ill or die from such experiments, but gastric upsets of varying severity are a very real possibility. The guarantee, ultimately, is as good as your identification skill. For instance, the photo above is an extreme case of very similar mushrooms only differing in one small detail: one of them has fine red dots on the stem right under the cap, while the other has a netted pattern. I doubt that many people can tell them apart, and this is the real reason why collecting wild fungi for the pot is never going to be a very popular pastime.

Image credits:
Boletus luridiformis
Boletus pulcherrimus