MYCOLOGY 101 - PART 2The Vice Guide to Really Fascinating American Mushrooms
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| PHOTOS AND TEXT BY DAVID FISCHER, mushroom expert and coauthor of Edible Wild Mushrooms of North America: A Field-to-Kitchen Guide and Mushrooms of Northeastern North America. Go to Americanmushrooms.com for about a zillion more mushroom fun-facts. |
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| When you’re really lucky and you have fresh specimens, if you sit in a dark room and let your eyes adjust, these have a green glow-in-the-dark hue. There are a few other mushrooms that glow in the dark too, like the Luminescent Panus. I’ve had inquiries about glowing mushrooms from people who live near nuclear power plants. They’re always disappointed when I tell them that these are common species and not radioactive mutants. They can look a lot like chanterelles, but they’re poisonous. You have to be careful because you can’t always see the glow. |
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| This is one of the world’s deadliest mushrooms. It’s very common and it’s very poisonous. A few years ago a man in Buffalo died from mistaking them for grocery-store-variety white button mushrooms. It’s not a good way to go. There are no symptoms for up to 24 hours and then you get flulike feelings—nausea, diarrhea, chills. Then it subsides and you think you just had a 24-hour bug. Meanwhile toxins are rapidly destroying your liver. You turn yellow from jaundice and you shoot to the top of the liver-transplant waiting list. Congratulations. |
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| This is a widely cultivated mushroom that has a wonderful flavor and potent medicinal values. It’s full of vitamins and minerals and is used to help the immune system. It also has antitumor potential; it can be used to treat certain forms of cancer. Somewhere in the Catskills they’re building a huge windowless indoor Maitake-growing facility right now to supply restaurants. They can be very abundant. I’ve seen single large oak trees with 100 pounds of Maitake growing around them. |
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TO BE CONTINUED:
MYCOLOGY 101 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
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