Kate wrote to Gang Gang on Tuesday to say including Antonio's tip about using garlic to test a mushroom's toxicity was really bad (if not negligent). "Antonio may know what he is doing (or think he does) but imagine others reading this and using that as their gauge of mushroom safety. I know you have included a little paragraph about ACT Health warnings, but that should be the key element to the story, not Antonio's garlic tips. As you well know, it can become an issue of life and death."

Ian wrote to say the fungi we called a mushroom looked nothing like those sold at a supermarket.
"What is the scientific name of the item held by Antonio D'Ambrosio in your article?," Ian asked.
"What is the voracity of the claim that if you cook garlic with the fungi and it turns brown that it confirms it is poisonous and not safe to eat? Is it true then that if the garlic does not turn brown it is safe to eat?"

ACT Health asked for the reference to the garlic test to be omitted to avoid people relying on it.

Independent botanist Richard Windsor has been at loggerheads with ACT Health for years over awareness of death cap mushrooms. He said ACT Health confused the death cap with the paddy straw mushroom, which has brown gills. "Death cap has white gills, as white as the finest copy paper you will see."

He also disagrees with advice on ACT Health's website, included in Tuesday's column, that death cap mushrooms appear after warm, wet weather. "A temperature drop precipitates their appearance. It commonly follows a big storm, when you get south-westerly, cold wet weather coming up in February," Richard said. "You get a dump of rain and two or three days with cooler temperatures and bingo, they are everywhere."

Looking for mushrooms, Richard has encountered Europeans with a sound grasp of what they were looking for, and the ability to distinguish between a good one and a death cap.

"There are half a dozen white-gilled mushrooms that are edible. Why would you risk it? If you say don't eat white-gilled mushrooms, which is what we were taught as kids, no problems. There are enough brown-gilled mushrooms out there that can be poisonous; well, at least two anyway.

"The thing is, there are three or four common edible mushrooms in the ACT which are choice eating, and there are probably a dozen others that are OK, but the three or four common ones are not white-gilled," he said.

Richard said Antonio's mushroom looked like a polypore, which come in different types, most of which are non-poisonous.

Ema also wrote to say it was misleading and possibly dangerous to rely on a garlic test. "This is a myth that some people from Europe believe. It may have been applicable to the traditional mushrooms they used, but it is not applicable to Australian mushrooms."

Luke asked for a piece of Antonio's mushroom tissue. "I will be able to clone it in order to replicate and preserve its genetics. The genetics responsible for such a large species ought to be preserved," he said.