Summer and fall are the times when we love to bond with the land. Even if we are not farmers, in the summer, we get a little closer to our agricultural forbears –we pick strawberries at our favorite nearby orchard, we garden and grow vegetables or flowers, we gather apples or other fruits, we go on excursions to find wild berries or wild mushrooms. The problem of course with venturing out of our neighborhood market and into the wilds of the woods is that identification of tasty food versus poisonous food becomes vitally important.

Poison berries may masquerade as their delicious counterparts. Poisonous toadstools may look very similar to the tasty mushrooms you love in your favorite stew.

How do you know which are which? Even professional hikers sometimes can have difficulty discerning o…