The pretty amanita mushroom is a common trope for children’s books, greeting cards, and all manner of decorative kitsch. Besides, we’re talking about marketing people here, and they are always making clients tear out their hair. . The perfect slogan for a marketing firm would be “Who wrote this crap? We did!”
8 Likes
Reading texts about Amanita Muscaria through the years, there is a lot of conflicting information about it. Maybe in confusion with the other Amanita species. Even though Muscarias are not poisonous, much literature refers to them as such.
Amanitas are “old world” magic mushrooms, and were perhaps the only psychedelic kinds growing in Europe and Asia. So references to magic mushrooms from these mythologies and folklores have usually been A. Muscaria.
The psychoactive mechanisms between Muscaria and the various Psilocybes is completely different. The latter contain psilocybin, an indole alkaloid not dissimilar to LSD and mescaline - while the former contain an assortment of different substances, such as beta carbolines and ibotenic acid.
Even kids know that A. Muscaria is psychoactive! It’s on the cover of the Golden Guide, FFS! XD
4 Likes
All good hallucinogens induce a little vomiting. It’s nothing like an illness or drunken vomit though, it’s a lot more cathartic.
Edit:
A friend of mine had a book on all the mushroom types, it was prefaced with the words “All mushrooms are edible. Though some only once.”
8 Likes
What makes you say they aren’t poisonous? They aren’t generally deadly, but are well documented to cause a whole suite of symptoms that are generally recognized as poisoning, including nausea, ataxia, sometimes even seizures.
I’m curious if you’re familiar with this type from direct experience. It’s all well and good to say hallucinogens induce vomiting, but then I could say it’s not uncommon for serious illness to come with the odd hallucination either. From what I’ve read, A. muscaria effects seem to be somewhere between the two, more toxic than hallucinogens like psilocybin and more hallucinogenic than most toxins. If that’s wrong, I’d be interested to know.
2 Likes
I’ve not tried A. Muscaria, but I have tried a good fair number of assorted molecules. What I’ve not eaten, close friends have, and we’ve been together for the duration.
Really, everything is poisonous, it just depends on dosage. Good old H2O falls squarely in that category too.
2 Likes
The point is the absurdity of the label and the naturalistic fallacy.
1 Like
Are you saying words can’t have different meanings?
Organic already had two definitions, “relating to, or derived from living matter” and “containing carbon compounds.” I don’t think anyone ever confused these two definitions.
“Organic” has also been used to refer to an agricultural practice since 1939, when Lord Northbourne used it to describe his ideas of the farm as organism.
We can debate whether or not organic food is better for the environment or for people, but the term itself isn’t absurd. It has a specific meaning.
2 Likes
We can most certainly debate about the stupidity of pushing “organic” as a label as it does not refer to “the organism of the farm”. It is an attempt to conflate and push the naturalistic fallacy over actual science and discussion of tangible harms (versus fearmongering about frankenfoods.)
We can disagree about the necessity of organics (we likely agree more about biodiversity and agricultural policy) but the marketing rhetoric behind it is not at all unassailable.
1 Like
I imagine plenty of ‘natural’ things we eat are poisonous IF NOT PROPERLY PREPARED. E.g.taro and cassava.
2 Likes
I am not a mushroom expert, but I do hunt them. This may be a destroying angel. The gills aren’t quite right but it was growing in the right place at the right time.
(Image upload is currently borked)
Not all food is organic. Water isn’t, salt isn’t, minerals aren’t (though you’ll often get them from organic sources, e.g. green leafy vegetables, and many of the nutrients such as calcium and magnesium can be in organic forms such as citrate or gluconate salts.)
The biggest problem with poisonous mushrooms in the US is immigrants picking mushrooms that look like the yummy ones from the old country, but are actually deadly species in the Amanita family (not muscaria.) There are other species of poisonous mushrooms that get eaten occasionally as well, but most of those are “vomit for a day” poisons rather than “destroy your liver and kidneys without many symptoms” kinds, so they don’t show up in the news as much.
There are lots of magic mushrooms, but at least here in the US, the only popular ones are psilocybes, which are fairly safe and fun, as opposed to things like muscaria that are allegedly a much less enjoyable trip and more poisonous.
2 Likes
“I’m organic, and so is my wife!”
2 Likes
All mushrooms are edible, once.
1 Like
Not those white pieces of shite they sell in tins.
2 Likes
Let’s try a different photo of a different mushroom.
Paging @codinghorror
Is perhaps the reason the photo in post, err, 30 is borked because I previously used it in the past?
This guy had me scratching my head. The common wisdom is Never pick a white mushroom in an evergreen Forest in the NW. But the proportions and gills had me stumped.
1 Like
What about table salt? That’s inorganic. Or water…
Edit: @billstewart beat me to it.
That looks a lot like Amanita Simethica Smithiana to me. But I’m not a shroomer.
Having grown up in the forests of the PNW, my dad always taught me to leave wild mushrooms alone, the only shrooms you can know are safe with a high degree of certainty are from the grocery store.
Good advice. I have two locations where I harvest two varieties, cause I know from the mycological society false versions don’t grow there.
The others I photograph 
