September marks the beginning of the mushroom season. And in the forest, even harvesting has gone digital: now, several applications offer, through a simple photo, easy identification of ceps, boletes or chanterelles. But behind these promises there is also a danger, that of ingesting a poisonous mushroom, even deadly.
However, these applications are numerous. Among them, the aptly named Champignouf, Champignons Pro or IK Champi offer this type of service. All you have to do is upload a photo, possibly answer several questions (“does it grow on a tree”, “does it have a ring on its foot”), and then wait a few seconds for the species to be recognized.
A risk of misrecognition
But if Champignouf, one of the most famous applications (more than a million downloads in the Play Store), specifies to recognize more than 1,000 species, the application explicitly qualifies its effectiveness.
In fact, many toxic and non-toxic mushrooms have very similar appearances. However, ingesting an inedible mushroom can cause food poisoning, but also liver and brain damage or, in the most extreme cases, death.
Faced with this problem, the National Health Security Agency even published a press release in 2020 inviting collectors “not to consume mushrooms identified by a mushroom recognition application on smartphones, due to the high risk of error.”
The best way to avoid health problems is to take the harvested fruit to a specialist. Some pharmacists still offer this service, but it is above all the mycology associations that acclaim it.
Source: BFM TV
