Australian Wild Mushrooms picker Richard Ford, who has been foraging for 30 years, said "you don't get two chances" when it comes to picking the wrong mushroom.

"The idea of randomly trying them like a lot of people are doing these days is absolutely stupid, plus you can kill someone else, you can kill yourself," he said.

"People have lost any common sense when it comes to how to gather food because we don't do it - you don't shove any berry in your mouth and you don't shove any old mushroom in your mouth."

Death Cap mushrooms grow under oak trees, ranging in colour from pale yellow-green to olive brown with ridges on the underside of the cap are white.

Consuming a single Death Cap can be fatal, with symptoms including stomach pains, nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea and liver damage.

The Yellow-staining Mushroom grows in large patches on lawns and gardens and looks similar to edible Field mushrooms.

These mushrooms are the cause of most poisonings due to ingestion of wild fungi in Victoria, and the severity of the symptoms - nausea, stomach cramps, diarrhoea and vomiting - varying with the amount eaten.

Mr Ford said in the last decade interest in foraging has grown in Australia.

"When I started it was basically the only people that were doing any foraging were Europeans that had come over ... foraging wild mushrooms in the rest of the world is huge so they brought a tradition of doing it with them, but Australians adopted this, 'they're all toadstools attitude, they're all poisonous'," he said.

"We really didn't have any mushroom knowledge, we got rid of Indigenous people before we asked them about the mushrooms so still to this day it's a fairly blank slate in this country, but in last 10 years everybody wants to forage."

The official health advice listed on the Department of Health website states, "unless you are an expert, do not pick and eat wild mushrooms in Victoria".

Mr Ford echoed this, and said if people did decide to forage, extensive research was required.

"If you're going to pick your own mushrooms, you need to learn in some way so you can be certain what mushroom you are picking and eating, and I do mean certain, I always tell people 110 per cent," he said.

"You got to be able to feed it to your kid, your grandmother ... there are no golden rules, there's no single test that will tell you whether a mushroom is poisonous or safe to eat, so you actually have to learn each mushroom at a time safely."

People should urgently attend an emergency department if they believe they've eaten a poisonous mushroom and should take any remaining mushroom with them for identification.

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