The current honor teaches Pathfinders to do high risk activities.
In the book Poisonous Plants of California the statement is made that,
"Of all poisonous plants in California, toxic mushrooms cause the most serious illnesses and nearly all the fatalities to humans."
Some mushrooms in the United States are so toxic that people have died from the mushroom toxin transferred by a knife to edible plants. Do you
really want to teach your Pathfinder's to engage in the high risk activity of wild mushroom eating? I do not want to be responsible for
getting someone into something that could kill them or put them in the hospital and have liver damage to live with for the rest of their life.
The current honor was written with only the eastern states in mind. Many of the required plants do not grow wild in the west.
It is strange to beg a stranger to allow a edible wild plant class to dig up their prized bed of day lilies. They often reply, "These
gorgeous flowers are not wild! Go get some real wild plants." Even in the east day lilies are not native they only grow where they have been introduced.
There are many areas that milkweed does not grow at all. But yet the honor requires it to be eaten.
This honor was originally written by someone I have great respect for, but he had studied wild edible plants mainly in the east when he wrote it. Is it time to update this honor to be safe and less regional ? How would the proposed changes effect those teaching it in the far north of Alaska and Canada? I would like some feedback from there.
[Proposed Honor][Official
Version]
