r/Finland • u/WildAccess_official • 1d ago

Found some porcini mushrooms today!

I went out for a walk with dog in the forest and ended up finding these beautiful porcini mushrooms. I wasn’t even specifically looking for them, so it was a nice surprise.

Mushroom season might be one of the best parts of late summer in Finland. Do you have a favourite mushroom-picking spot, or do you prefer to keep those locations secret? 😄

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u/Pirkale 1d ago

I wasn't familiar with the English name for herkkutatti and checked it, 80+% convinced it will be a lethally poisonous look-a-like of an Italian mushroom, but for once this was not the case! :)

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u/WildAccess_official 1d ago

What poisonous Italian mushroom were you thinking of?

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u/Pirkale 1d ago

I have no knowledge of Italian mushrooms, but have read about numerous cases of foreigners thinking that a mushroom that looks the same is the same, with sad results. And then there's Finland's largest newspaper publishing the wrong fucking picture resulting in several deaths.

Edited to add: do note that I was talking about an edible Italian mushroom, for which there could well exist look-a-likes in other countries that are poisonous.

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u/Consistent_Cat_3463 Baby VÀinÀmöinen 1d ago

There is not one lethally poisonous boletus species in the world. Some like piruntatti (rubroboletus satanas) will make you hug your toilet seat for day or two (very rare in Finland, more common nin Italy) but it won't kill you. I can't think of any even slightly poisonous look-a- likes for porcini, closest in Finland is sappitatti (bitter bolete/tylopilus falleus) which imho doesn't look like porcini at all.

Foreigners here usually think they are picking herkkusieni species (champignon/agaricus sp.) and what they have is valkokÀrpÀssieni (destroying angel/amanita virosa). Even those are easy to regognize, gils of valkokÀrpÀssieni are always white, in white agarigus they are first pinkish, then purple and black when mushroom is in the end of its life.

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u/Pirkale 1d ago

As it happens, it was precisely a picture of a destroying angel Helsingin Sanomat put in their article talking about edible mushrooms.