Is the fungus swine edible or toxic?

Inveterate mushroom pickers probably met at the height of summer an inconspicuous mushroom called a swine. The fungus is thin (or Paxillus involutus) grows in coniferous and deciduous forests, as well as in parks, along roads, in garbage dumps, on bare ground and even among anthills. This explains its name, accustomed to the people. Swine - mushrooms unpretentious and indiscriminate in the choice of the place of growth.

Fruits sufficiently long - from mid-June to October. It grows in large groups, sometimes lining its own pathways and creating chains and rings. Externally, the fungus of the swine is a dense fleshy cap on a short stem. The hat looks like a funnel with curved edges. It can reach up to 20 cm in diameter, but on average it is 10-12 cm. Initially it is flat, but as it grows it becomes funnel-shaped with a depression in the center. The hat is not always the right round shape, often with torn edges or irregular shape. Color - from light brown to dark brown. The surface of the whole fungus is rough, felt velvet. It seems very dense, but quickly turns into dust, especially at the bottom of the basket.

Mushrooms pig (photo above) refer to lamellar. The color of the plates is dirty-yellow, when pressed, dark traces remain, fragile dry partitions quickly crumble. The leg rarely grows more than 9 cm, diameter - from 1.5 to 2 cm, is located in the center, very often slightly shifted to the edge of the cap. The flesh is dense, yellow on the cut, then brown, often affected by worms.

Much less often you can find another species - Paxillus atromentosus, or the fungus is thick, and only in coniferous forests on tree stumps. Its edibility is doubtful because of an unpleasant bitter taste. Yes, and it looks strange - always a side leg, a cap with uneven edges, asymmetric, odorless and with very hard flesh. Undoubtedly, this mushroom is at the very end of the list of culinary attachments.

Despite this, the taste of the mushroom pig is thin like many (as opposed to thick). From ancient times in Russia, this species was used for food - boiled, salted, roasted. Until today, there is debate about edibility, as the fungus has good taste qualities, especially young swine. However, scientists found in them the presence of toxins and poisons. Each organism individually responds to these poisons, someone has acute poisoning from one time, and someone does not have any painful sensations. Muscarin - the poison contained in the fly agaric, is also found in swine. In addition, with constant and repeated use, destruction of erythrocytes in the blood is observed.

Specialists say that the pig is a kind of delayed-action mine. If the poisoning did not occur the first time, then further consequences can be very different - up to hallucinations and death. It is necessary to completely exclude this fungus from the diet of children. It is known that if some poisons and toxins disappear during heat treatment, the accumulated radioactive isotopes of copper and cesium remain in the pulp of the fungus. The main signs of poisoning are weakness, nausea, dizziness, pain in the liver. Also, several acute poisonings were recorded with the most sad outcome.