Treasures and Toxins in the Woods

One sunny Saturday, a group of naturalists and I loped through a forest preserve searching for wild fungi.  A parent had brought his young four year old daughter, which for a mushroom hunt can be questionable as the dangers out there are irreversible and slowly fatal.  Emphasize the word slow, for death will pry you from this plane languidly from a meager ingestion of 7 mg of one of the eight known amatoxins for an adult.  If you don't know for Certain, you are far better off going to the grocery where many species have become marketable and are delicious.  Believe and quake reflectively regarding the fact that even a scientifically trained mycologist can be fooled.

Stay away from anything all white, near white, greenish white, or that looks like it might have been white at some point in its short life.  Puffballs are often considered one of the safe, identifiable species, but the white roundness can be the stage in which the Amanitas grow egglike before bursting through the outer veil.  You are to cut the puffball in half to examine for the outlines of a mushroom head and stipe forming inside.  Hell's bells, I have eaten puffballs and frankly, I would rather eat a styrofoam coffee cup; the consistency is flaccid, poofy, tasteless and not worth wasting the butter in the pan.  Perhaps as a survival food, but that would happen only after I ate any chipmunks within rock-throwing range.  Even inside the puffball genus live poisonous Scleroderma, which is another reason for cutting the thing in half, for their centers mature into black, fetid masses of spores.  It won't kill you, but you will be beholden to the porcelain god for days after.

The mushroom foray was sanctioned and fairly formal, held in Reinstein Woods on a beautiful day in late September.  Of course, anything else interesting was celebrated as well, and being a preserve, everything stays left alone, nothing is to be picked or carried out.  A dead mouse, a dead bullfrog, and an almost dead salamander were considered talismans and celebrated with whoops by the young naturalists on this morning walk.  Invasive species from Europe and Asia were pointed out, and apparently the favor has been returned by American poison ivy and our grey squirrels that are currently raising Cain in England and pushing out the cuter, milder ones that Beatrix Potter adored, the red squirrels.

The father of the young girl asked if there was anything in the woods that could harm her if she handled it: absolutely.  Kids shouldn't be fed wild mushrooms at all, some species have toxins that don't bother adults as much as they could a child.  But there are poisonous ones, such as the above-mentioned Amanita that allegedly has a good flavor and often has evidence of animals nibbling at the cap.  Well, let me tell you, within four days whatever has eaten it is now kaput for it destroys the liver via a series of arcane steps.  After a bout with gastrointestinal pain, vomiting and diarrhea, there is resolve and you think you are getting better after this two or three day period; however, the slower-acting toxin has been busy destroying your liver resulting in jaundice, internal bleeding, delirium, seizures, coma and death in about six to sixteen days.  Survivors usually require a liver transplant.  Don't handle Death Caps, don't put them in a basket used for edibles.  Really, stay home and make eggs.

My fascination is that it was something we did as a family when I was younger, and as a result, I took courses at the Museum and then at college in mycology.  Neither plant nor animal, fungi has been named as a separate kingdom amid the animalia, plantae, monera and protists.  I have eaten wild mushrooms, but only the ones I have been sure to be edible.  Shaggy manes, Suillus, Agarics, Boletus edulis, Boletus bicolor, Collybia radicata, Pholiota squarrosa, Craterellus cornucopiodes, Hydnum repandum, Grifola frondosa, Lepiota procera, Leccinum scabrum, Lactarius deliciosus, and Dentinum repandum are not easily mixed up with anything deadly.  Mostly, I am happy with the store bought stuff, and will never serve anything fungal that I've gathered to anyone else.

It was a nice walk in the woods, something I miss doing on a regular basis.  The air in a forest is exceptionally fresh, oxygenated, and energizing, and anchors you to the earth after a life of cars and pavement, buildings and smartphones.  The smell of earth and fallen leaves reminds us of what we've removed from our lives, for the most part, but think of this: pizza.  Without fungus, there is none, for the crust rises with yeast, a fungi; next, add cheese made with fungus-based rennet, suitable for vegans; top this with Agaricus bisporus, the everyday supermarket mushroom, and you have dinner.  Eat mushrooms, for they are some of the strongest anti-cancer fighters science has studied; in fact, in some groceries this month you will find mushrooms packaged in pink cartons, in support of breast cancer awareness.

This post verges on rambling, my apologies.  Maybe it will lull you into that state of brain just before you decide to turn out the lights and hit the hay.  This is it, you think, the downward slide into that lovely, warm stupor of silence and deep unconsciousness, maybe a glass of milk before, brush teeth, one last look in the mirror before dreaming of dark crevices and fallen logs, hopping toads, and Alice, who was advised by caterpillar to try one side or the other of mushroom cap.  Sleep unfettered, walk through dreamtime's pathways, all pine needles and stalked fungi.  Good night, earthling.