----- Original Message -----
From: "Holly Krahe" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, July 04, 2003 11:33 PM
Subject: Re: Milk


> In a message dated 07/04/2003 4:36:49 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
> [log in to unmask] writes:

> >  some Swedish people who believe that poison mushroom (morel) is good
for you

> There is nothing poisonous about morels.  Perhaps you mean some other
variety
> of mushroom?

Well, difficult thing again. It seems as if there are different things
called "morel". A potatorelative with the botanical name "Solanum dulcamare"
which is poisonous too. It is a kind of lian and has violet flowers.

The plant I meant is something we call "stenmurkla", botanical name
Gyromitra esculenta. It became illegal to sell or serve it to the public in
1996 when we entered the European Union. The people of northern Sweden are
quite troubbled with respiratory diseases, allergies and earlier on cancer
in the stomach. In spite of the fact that this mushroom that I am talking of
is lethal if not dehydrated or boiled many times before eating, no one seems
to have considered it the cause of some of the bad health in northern
Sweden. I guess this is because it is thought of as a delicacy. It is brown,
very wrinkled and looks a bit like a human brain. You can find it early in
june-july, not in the autumn like most other mushrooms.

In my Collins dictionary it says about morel: "Any edibel "saprotrophic
ascomycetous fungus" of the genus Morchella in which the mushroom has a
pitted cap, order Pezizalis." This is obviously something else.

I must admit that I am myself a bit scared of mushrooms that have been
picked by experts on mushrooms. The reason is that I have never heard of a
mushroom poisoning accent that had not had the aid of an expert.

Eva