Dunka mushrooms or, as experts call them, pigs (Latin name Paxillus) are popular among housewives due to their suitability for winter preparations of cold salting. This material provides a description, photos, edible and poisonous varieties of pigs as a popular mushroom.

Mushroom description

Dunks have a small, dense and loose hat with a diameter of 10-12 cm. In the process of growth, they bend to a funnel shape, as shown in the photograph.

Here is what distinguishes mushrooms of this variety from other representatives:

• color depends on age - young ones are most often yellow-green, and adults are olive-red;
• externally, the plant may be sticky, smooth, wet or dry. It all depends on the weather in which the pig grows;
• pale yellow hardened and sometimes brown flesh can be either hard or soft. Damaged places immediately darken;
• the dense, gray and dull leg of the mushroom is quite small - 8–9 cm in length and 2 cm in thickness;
• distributed in August - November.

The raw pig has almost no smell or taste. But after heat treatment (frying or cooking), it can be pickled or cooked in a mixture with other types of mushrooms.

Video: Can I eat sows

Prevalence

Pigs grow in large quantities. In this case, the mushroom externally differs significantly from the classical description and varies depending on the habitat. Most often they are found on the edges, clearings of coniferous or deciduous forests with high soil moisture, less often - in meadow areas or along the swamp. Mushrooms grow on stumps or in old fallen trees. And sometimes they settle in the walls of houses made of wood, while destroying the structure.

Poisonous properties

Previously, sows were considered quite harmless and were often used in cooking. But since the 80s of the last century, numerous cases of poisoning began to be noted in some countries, after which doctors unanimously attributed this type to the category of poisonous mushrooms.

• Why pigs harm the body:
• Mushrooms contain poison lectin, which causes anemia. This is due to the fact that the toxin of the fungi enters the bloodstream and provokes the destruction of red blood cells.
• If the portion of the harmful substance was negligible, an acute form of neuropathy, jaundice, or renal failure may occur.
• The use of large doses entails nausea, diarrhea, intoxication, bradycardia, visual impairment. Among the most severe consequences are respiratory failure and pulmonary edema.
• Excessive consumption of sows also causes drug addiction.

At the same time, unlike poisonous poisonous grebe poisoning, the poison of a sow is very slow, and the first symptoms may appear after a long period of time.

The most harmful effect they have on the children's body. To the same extent, this applies to people who have had a serious illness, suffering from urolithiasis or from the manifestation of various forms of allergies. In addition, it has been proven that muscarin, an alkaloid found in red mushrooms, was found in sows.

Important! It is strongly not recommended to use canned or boiled pigs as an appetizer for alcoholic beverages. This combination causes vivid, frightening hallucinations. Such an effect is caused by the presence of muscarinic cholinomimetic in the composition of the pigs.

Symptoms and treatment of poisoning

The whole difficulty is that it is very difficult to establish poisoning by sows, since it does not appear immediately. But still there are a number of indicators that indicate the presence of poison in the body:

• feeling unwell for a long time;
• nausea;
• stomach upset;
• increased peristalsis;
• stomach ache;
• pallor;
• jaundice develops;
• increased bilirubin;
• decrease in daily urine;
• oligoanuria (with very severe intoxication);
• impaired vision, heart and respiratory rhythm.

If the use of poisonous mushrooms is minimized, then the symptoms can manifest themselves in the form of lethargy, decreased immunity, nausea and diarrhea, which go away by themselves. Sometimes the victim may not understand that it was the pigs who caused the poisoning. In other cases, a medical examination and hospitalization cannot be avoided.

Did you know? Billions of mushroom spores hover in the air, and if you take a sample in any room, they will also be present there. This is due to the fact that fungi reproduce by spores, and even a simple champignon can throw more than 40 million substances into the air at a speed of 90 km / h.

After the first signs of mushroom poisoning appear, you should immediately call an ambulance. Then provide a series of urgent actions:

1. Provoke nausea with a solution of salt and water, mustard or heavy drinking. Thanks to vomiting, the stomach can be freed from mushroom residues. In this case, it is important to be conscious, because in an unconscious state the patient can choke on vomit.
2. Rinse the stomach. For example, you can use a weak solution of potassium permanganate, take activated carbon or other available sorbent.
3. Autoimmune allergic reactions can be reduced by taking antihistamines (Suprastin, Fenistil, Cetrin, etc.).

It is important to consider that there is no single antidote, and untimely assistance can lead to fatal consequences. Recovery is possible only after providing qualified medical care.

Varieties

Today identified ten varieties of sows. Moreover, the composition of each species includes harmful substances in different quantities. Some of them belong to the category of poisonous. The most common will be discussed later.

Thin pig

Thin pig (in Latin Paxillus involutus) has a number of characteristics:

• curved upward or direct upper body of the fungus;
• the color is gray-olive or bright brown;
• velvety to the touch with curved fluffy edges;
• tasteless yellow, tender and loose flesh; odorless;
• plate-like layer of rare red-yellow plates. Sometimes they are combined by membranes, creating an openwork outer layer;
• large legs with a total length of 1-2 cm and 9 cm in height.

This type of mushroom is inedible.

Alder pig

The species of edible sows concentrated in deciduous forests with high soil moisture and the obligatory presence of alder.

The view can be described as follows:

• convex hat with a diameter of 8-15 cm with thin curled edges;
• then it is leveled and pressed, the edges are leveled or lowered;
• dry, fluffy to the touch with small cracks;
• the color is ocher-brown, brown with yellow or alo-brown. Sometimes it acquires an olive shade that darkens when pressed;
• lamellar surface of the fungus;
• plates of medium or strong density, oblong with joints in the center of the base;
• a cylinder-shaped leg, yellow-scarlet or green-brown, cross-section is 1–2.5 cm, and height is up to 8 cm;
• soft, compacted flesh of yellow or yellow-red color. It gets dark when cut.

The mushroom can be found from July to September. Belongs to the category of edible.

Ear-shaped pig

The ear-shaped, or as it is also called pan-shaped, pig is described as follows:

• rough, dense hat with a diameter of up to 12 cm;
• a fluffy or smoothed fan-shaped surface;
• rough, torn or wavy edges;
• color varies from yellow-brown to dark red;
• elastic-rubbery pulp of yellow-white or pale chestnut color, which turns brown on a cut;
• the ear-shaped pig in most cases does not have a leg or it grows, but is very short.

For this species, a coniferous smell is characteristic. It refers to the relatively edible.

What kind of pigs can I eat

A few years ago, pigs were considered an edible species of mushrooms, despite the fact that they belonged to the fourth group of unsafe ones (such mushrooms can be consumed after long processing and soaking). They are currently very toxic, and collecting these poisonous mushrooms is strictly contraindicated.

Important! Distinguish places of cuts from poisonous dunk from edible. The pulp of the fungus absorbs moisture greatly, so when pressed it becomes very dark. This indicates that the pig contains a large amount of toxins.

Ignoring warnings, mushroom pickers often collect a conditionally edible fat sow for consumption.

What processing rules are important to observe to minimize the harm of toxic fungi:

1. Dunks must be cleaned immediately after collection, fresh.
2. Processed mushrooms must be soaked in water, salt and lemon juice for 24 hours, while the water must be changed 3-4 times. These actions will help rid the product of radioisotopes and heavy metal salts.
3. Then the sows must be boiled in salted water (cooking time - 5 minutes), then drain the water and boil twice for 30 minutes, each time changing the water to clean. After processing, rinse the mushrooms again.

After cooling, the pork can be used as a filling or a separate tasty side dish, pickle, stew, fry, etc.

As you can see, most of the sows can cause severe poisoning and cause irreparable harm to the body. You can cook them, but they are undesirable to add to food, as a recent study of the composition of Paxillus proved the impossibility of destroying harmful toxins. Thus, the use of the fungus in cooking is a great risk, which can be avoided by knowing how poisonous and conditionally edible sows can look.