In the words of Stephen Fry, "Of course too much is bad for you! That’s what “too much” means!
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If this is true, then Prometheus has some explaining to do.
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CSB: my mother in law was out camping once. She noticed another family making hot dog and marshmallow spears out oleander.
She had a calm buy very hurried conversation with them in why that is a bad idea.
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I get what you are saying, but it is similar to putting un-denatured nettles on your logo. Yeah, they can both be food; both taste like ass (ask me about the nettle tincture I make for allergies); and both are not for noobs.
BTW, since you sound like you know your way around fungi, what are these? I’ve never been able to get an answer.
Douglas fir Forrest, November, pacific nw.
Oleander skewers are not as hazardous as you might think:
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Yeah, I know, but they were cutting down some persons bush when there were also perfectly good trees around.
I always bring Sting to roast 'mellows. Non toxic and detects orcs.
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But you have to put up with his bloody awful music.
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As other dude said, probably not a good idea, but the cardiac glycosides in Oleander tend to be concentrated in the leaves, particularly the relatively young ones. They are present in all parts of the plant though.
An interesting point about Oleander’s glycosides is that they’re not heat labile. You can boil the heck out of the leaves and end up with a horribly toxic brew. (Oleander tea anyone?).
There have even been accounts of people having problems after burning oleander brush.
Here’s a cool article on a toxicity case (where I’m pretty sure someone tried to get the patient to kill herself):
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I think there are parts of Finland and Russia where it is, or has been, eaten regularly/treated as a local delicacy. Then again I have no idea whether the growing conditions have an impact upon the level of toxicity/fun times.
Nowhere near as much fun.
It is interesting how ‘toxic’ and ‘psychoactive’ are often conflated in guides. Many psychoactive plants and presumably some fungi are also dangerous in terms of toxicity, of course - but many are not. I guess that if they were to distinguish they might be open to accusations of encouraging drug use. But the danger of walking onto a motorway because you thought it was the Yellow Brick Road is not as direct, in my opinion, as the danger of liver failure, and it doesn’t facilitate good decision-making in terms of ‘next steps’ if ingestion occurs. If someone is at a major risk of tripping balls I don’t think rushing them to A&E/ER to have their stomach pumped is a great way of managing the situation/minimising trauma.
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Probably not. Although a lot of the psychoactive Amanita species aren’t really “fun”. From the reporting I’ve seen, most of the symptoms seem to be consistent with other deliriants like alcohol or GHB, in that they show a lot of physiological symptoms with minimal cognitive effects besides impairment. Being massively cognitively impaired while feeling very sick physically isn’t a fun time in my own opinion (I’m in no way speaking for anyone else). As far as I can tell (without having tried it myself) being on Amanita Muscaria is much like being blackout drunk without the disinfecting properties of alcohol, and with additional side-effects.
I absolutely do not condemn those who enjoy partaking in it. But it seems to me like a pointless high when there are many alternatives available in my civilization that are either more potent, and/or have fewer side-effects. When other mushrooms (Psilocybin-containing mushrooms) are a better alternative to Amanita Muscaria, that should at least be an indication that Amanita Muscaria probably isn’t a very good choice for whatever you want to get out of it.
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I was being facetious - I think that it is amongst the hallucinogens that only the very dedicated need sample. That said, A. muscaria does seem to have been chosen in some circumstances when other intoxicants were available.
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An interesting use of rhododendron honey is described in a Leslie Fish’s song of the same name.
http://lyrics.wikia.com/Leslie_Fish:Rhododendron_Honey
(sadly, no youtube of the track.)
I’ve eaten these. Yes you have to prepare em correctly.
There are quite a few mushrooms that will make you sick raw, but are fine (and tasty) if cooked.
The ‘active’ ingredient in em is quite a bit like Ambien, from a psychopharmalogical point of view.
Not my style of fun, but I can see the appeal I guess.
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Yeah, and if you have even the slightest itch that a false version of what you are hunting made it into your basket, cook them all or throw them away.
False Chanterelle
Chanterelle
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Amanita virosa, amanita bisporigera, and amanita verna look very similar to each other and are collectively colloquially known as “destroying” or “death angels”. It’s one of them.
You need a microscope to tell them apart.
They reportedly are very yummy and after tasting them it takes a week or more until you’re dead.
(Es sind Knollenblätterpilze)
“you sound like you know your way around fungi”
I’m just a fun guy!
I really don’t and have never known anyone that does (outside of their local hunting grounds).
New species of fungi are discovered at a very high rate, with an estimated value of 800 new species registered annually.
Just the area of the world I currently live in supposedly has over 4000 kinds of shrooms of which officially around a 150 can sicken, damage for life, or kill. Not counting molds.
Many kinds of shrooms look very similar to others and there is such great variation and regional variation in the fruiting bodies that their looks overlap. It requires labs to tell them apart. And data banks.
And it is hard to draw a line. Quite many of the so called edible mushrooms are toxic and cause mushroom poisoning to those that eat their fill, while some of the considered poisonous shrooms cause less severe symptoms.
All of them are radioactive nowadays. Maybe not everywhere.
I think amanita muscaria is considered a poison mushroom mostly because it is borderline. And a heathen drug. And for the very same reason some morons used it for a food labeling logo, its ultra-high recognition value.
What were they thinking. Everyone involved. Every single person involved. Why didn’t they ask any four year old anywhere in the world?
Besides the fact that Mario eats them.
Fly agaric, toadstools, look poisonous as fuck!
Especially in Eurasia. I feel certain that even the very first group of humans that encountered them approached them carefully and didn’t stuff them in their mouths to try what would happen. Accidental poisoning is almost impossible, it has aposematic warning signal colours but it won’t even kill you if you try it.
It might be very attractive to toddlers. I imagine it often was the first mushroom pointed out to be poisonous to the children of early European hunter gatherers. Today it surely is.
tl;dr:
It was sacred even to Pre-Indo-Germanic populations.
Some echo of the shamanic tradition of the Finno-Ugric peoples appears to live on in today’s western Christmas.
Compare to Santa’s elves:
Scandinavia’s Polar-circle dwelling Sami (Laplanders) traditionally wear bright colored clothes and “funny” pointy hats and shoes and used to be much shorter than Germanic Scandinavians. They were fishermen hunters and reindeer nomads, a few still are.
Because of their nomadic lifestyle the number of material possessions Sami could practically have was low. They had no useless pieces of art. Every object they owned served a real life purpose or several.
This caused a culture of them making all their objects of daily use extremely functional yet vibrant, decorative and beautiful. Art and daily life were all the same thing.
At the time Scandinavia was christianized by decree of their respective norse kings Sami had already been tributary to “Viking type people” for several hundred years, their artful objects had become part of norse culture. (Vikings carried Sami knives.)
Many heathen norseman festivities, like the Alf-blot (elve-sacrifice), were still celebrated by a population that had become Christian in name but that really didn’t give damn.
Alf-blot took place over three nights after winter solstice.
It is still celebrated by the name of Jul-blot, Yule. Gifts are given.
Drying raises fly agaric’s potency. Reindeer love fly agaric and are quite tolerant to its poison. Shamans used to feed dried agaric to reindeer, their kidneys and livers destroying/filtering much of the muscarine making the reindeer urinate out most of the “desired” entheogens ibotenic acid and muscimol in high potency. Thusly, do eat the yellow snow. Just avoid huskies. That is how it’s done.
As the name in multiple language implies it may cause a dreamy flying sensation after the agitated phase. Sort of like peyote and others.
Nikolaus is Wodens last and Christian kenning. There is German Christmas poetry from the 16th century that refers to Santa as “Wude Nikolaus” riding through the night sky and emptying his sack if begged to.
(“Wuotan” is related to the German word ‘wüten’, furious furor.
Berserkers were described with the symptoms caused by highly agitating drugs, their shirtlessness (Ber = bare, Serk = shirt) “steel could not bite them” their bite me attitude towards weapons and spirit travel or whatever the spiritual call that, finding and controlling/turning into a wild animal and of course their berserk fury. It’s in the news all the time, but in our culture it is generally frowned upon.)
Nobody stopped me.
/tl;dr
I have no idea what those little guys in the last picture are. Do they glow in the dark? They all look the same to me between central Pacific and Norway. Not usable for a logo. Too generic.
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Don’t stop. I implore you not to stop.
The little guys didn’t appear to flouresce. And I am happy yo hear I found a destroyer,that is a mushroom hunter merit badge.
I went years without ever seeing a fly agaric (yes I will continue using common names, since there are so many false species), then two years ago they were everywhere . I don’t care for most shrooms, except for truffles, chanterelles, and those weird cepes that taste like brown sugar.
But please, continue 
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Looks like a cartoony version of A. muscaria on this package, but I’m pretty sure I’m OK eating the contents… right?
Try throwing some citrus seeds in the area.
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