All photos on page: Amanita muscaria
Gem-studded Amanita (A. gemmata) contains muscimol and ibotenic acid. It has a pale to dark yellow cap with white patches and appears in the Pacific Northwest region from spring to fall.
Purple Amanita (A. porphyria) contains trace amounts of bufotenine.
The eastern A. parcivolvata contains traces of isoxazole, but is harmless, and has no sac-like volva, or partial veil. It is red to yellow-orange and often mistaken for A. muscaria.
Grisette (A. vaginata) with its gray color and white fragments is common in my area. I used to throw them away, but now I take them home and eat them.
Pantherina is from the Latin, meaning to resemble a panther. In Japan, it is known as ibo tengutake from ibo meaning “warted,” tengu being the proper name, and take, for “mushroom.”
The panther is found more frequently in boreal forests or in the Rocky Mountains, having a symbiotic relationship with various conifers, including the douglas fir.
Fly agaric has been used for centuries as part of secret religious ceremonies and is thought by many scholars to be the Soma mentioned in the Rig Veda, in which more than 120 hymns are devoted to its praise. Some of the poems describe how priests, having drunk the juice of Soma, “urinate the divine drink.” Here is one sample:
Like a stag, come here to drink!
Drink Soma, as much as you like.
Pissing it out day by day, O generous one,
You have assumed your most mighty force.
Soma, Divine Mushroom of Immortality, by Gordon Wasson, is a highly regarded book attempting to prove that Soma of the Riga-Veda was, in fact, fly agaric. Some of the poems describe how priests, having drunk the juice of Soma “urinate the divine drink.” Soma literally means “the pressed one.” It has been suggested that the name “fly agaric” may allude to the fly of madness, or divine possession.
In the Middle Ages, delirium, drunkenness, and insanity were attributed to insects loose in the head. In English, we speak of “bees in his bonnet”; while in France they say “la mouche lui monte a la tete” meaning “the fly is climbing in this head.” In Russian, there is an expression that a drunken man is “with fly.”
Add to the fact that Soma was said to lack a root, leaves, or blossoms, and it makes for a very compelling argument.
Wasson traced the mushroom metaphor through other cultures, and coined the term “bemushroomed” to describe fly agaric intoxication.
In Russia, pup means “navel,” and pupyry means “fungal growth.” In contemporary Cambodia, pzat means both “navel” and “mushroom,” suggesting a connection with inner knowledge.
The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, by John Allegro, a Dead Sea Scroll authority, also endeavored to prove that “Israelistism” was based on the sacred fungus. Allegro deduced that the root words derived from Sumerian were related to the phallic symbol of fertility and the sacred mushroom.
Sara Friedman, in Celebrating the Wild Mushroom, speculates: “Could the red-capped resident of the far north who flies through the heavens driving reindeer be anything but a fly agaric-inspired metaphor?”
In northern Europe, the Germanic gods played a role in bringing us mushrooms. On winter solstice night each year, the chief God, Wotan, rides through the forest on horseback, pursued by devils. They ride faster and faster, until blood-specked foam falls from the horse’s mouth. The following spring, a beautiful, red-capped mushroom with white specks is found.
In Norse myths, Odin had an eight-legged horse called Sleipnir that he rode into battle. Together they traveled through the nine worlds of gods, giants, elves, men, and the underworld. Because he carried Odin through the skies around Christmas in the Wild Hunt, when fits were left for the faithful under pine trees, some authors have suggested the eight-legged steed gave rise to Santa Claus’ eight reindeer.
Thomas Nast’s famous portrayal of Santa Claus, with twinkling eyes and cherry nose, driving a sleigh pulled by reindeer flying over treetops, takes on a whole new connotation. His clothing of red and white represents the fly agaric eaten by the shaman, and the Koryak custom of eating mushroomed reindeer is another shamanic journey.
The image of Santa Claus climbing down the chimney resonates of Siberian festivals where the shaman would climb the central post of winter dwellings and exit via the smokehole.
Drying the mushrooms by stringing them like popcorn and hanging them above the fireplace hearth is reminiscent of hanging stockings for Christmas. Decorating the pine or other coniferous tree with dried fungi is similar to our modern day decoration.
Another custom associated with the Celtic harvest festival Samhein is a special tea brewed from the peeled cap picked during a full moon. This holiday is still celebrated by some who drink a cold-water extract of the dried skin before going to bed. The next morning, the dreams are described and interpreted.
According to Wasson, chimney sweeps of central Europe consider the mushroom their emblem.
The Egyptian God of the Underworld, Osiris, rode the sky in a chariot. After his death, Isis found an evergreen had grown overnight in his place, suggesting death and rebirth. The traditional birth of Osiris was December 25, from mythology more than 5,000 years old. Djed was the pillar or phallus of Osiris, and the Eye of Horus was the Djed-Eye.
Esau comes from the Sumerian E-sh-u-a, which means “raised canopy” (or cap), and Esau’s brother’s name, Jacob, or Ia-a-gub, refers to the “pillar” or stem.
The Greek chrisma means “anointing,” suggesting a deeper level to this holy substance.
In the Garden of Eden, the serpent and mushroom become one. “Both emerged from holes in the ground, in a manner reminiscent of the erection of the sexually aroused penis,” says Allegro.
Amanita muscaria (photo credits 1.1a)
Even Freud, in his Interpretation of Dreams, suggests that there are some things that are best left alone.
Even in the best interpreted dreams, there is often a place that must be left in the dark, because in the process of interpreting one notices a tangle of dream-thoughts arising which resists unraveling but has also made no further contributions to the dream content.
This then is the navel of the dream, the place where it straddles the unknown. The dream-thoughts, to which interpretation leads one, are necessarily interminable and branch out on all sides into the net-like entanglement of our world of thought. Out of one of the denser places in this meshwork, the dream-wish rises like a mushroom out of its mycelium.
Hmmm!
The Cree and other First Nations people made eyewash of Amanita to fight infection, but I can find no record of their use of the fungi for spiritual quest. The Algonquin, around the Great Lakes, were familiar with its use (see below). The Jesuit priest Charles l’Allemant wrote back to France in 1626 that natives believed that “after death they go to heaven where they eat mushrooms and have intercourse with each other.”
The Dogrib Athabascans, now known as tåîchô, still use fly agaric as a hallucinogen. Franz Boas, when studying Siberian tales of Big Raven, noted similar usage.
Here Amanita muscaria is employed as a sacrament in shamanism. A young neophyte reported that whatever the shaman had done to him “he had snatched me. I had no volition, I had no power of sleep, I didn’t eat, didn’t sleep, I didn’t think—I wasn’t in my body any longer.
“Cleansed and ripe for vision, I rise, a bursting ball of seeds in space … I have sung the note that shatters structure. And the note that shatters chaos, and been bloody.… I have been with the dead and attempted the labyrinth.”
The Ojibwa, near the Great Lakes, also used fly agaric for hallucinogenic effect. Manabozoh had a twin brother, a wolf, who was killed by the water spirits after luring him onto thin ice. To avenge his brother’s death, Manabozoh impersonated a frog shaman before killing the ice spirit, or manitous. He then found consolation in the mushrooms, which he introduced to humans. Other First Nations people, including the Cree, Menomini, and Salteaux, have their own versions of this tale.
Christian Rätsch suggests the Mayan Lacandon know the mushroom as hkib lu’um, meaning “the light of the earth.” The neighboring Chuj of Northern Guatemala dried the caps and smoked them with tobacco to induce inner journeys of prophecy.
People in the Shutul Valley of Afghanistan call the fungus raven’s bread, a term used in ancient Egypt and to this day in Eastern Europe. They boil the ground powder of the mushroom with fresh jewelweed (Impatiens nolitangere) and soured goat cheese brine to produce the well-known extract of Shutul (Bokar). The term chashm baskon is used for the mushroom, and means “eye-opener.”
In the small village of Qaf-e-Changar in the upper valley, the extract is mixed with calyx tips of henbane for therapeutic massage.
Igorot aborigines of Luzon, Philippines, call the mushroom ampacao, and brew six fresh caps into a drink used for rites of passage.
A recent book by Clark Heinrich, called Magic Mushrooms in Religion and Alchemy, is a fascinating exploration of the historical use of fly agaric, in both written and painted form. He traces mushroom use through the Vedic verses, as well as the Bible, the Holy Grail, and Alchemy with scholarly examination; making much sense of the hidden meanings in various cultures. It is a superb contribution to our knowledge of the ritual use of this fascinating fungus! A fresco in a Roman Catholic church in Plaincouralt, France, depicts Adam and Eve on either side of a tree of knowledge that is unequivocally a branched Amanita muscaria.
Another fresco found on the wall of a basilica of Aquileia in northern Italy may be left over from a former Roman temple.
A painted ceiling of St. Michael’s Church in Hildescheim, Germany, dated to 1192 AD, shows a large Amanita with Adam and Eve each holding a mushroom bud.
In magical use, the mushroom was placed on altars or in the bedroom for fertility purposes.
Laplanders make use of the reindeer’s fondness for the dried agaric by sprinkling it on the snow to help in herding. More potent is the muscimol-rich urine that is saved to help round up reindeer, or for their own intoxication.
Head twitching is noted in deer, squirrels, and chipmunks who nibble on the mushroom. In some areas of the boreal forest, dried Amanita muscaria caps are found set on spruce branches by squirrels for winter use. Assorted dried mushrooms may make up as much as 25 percent of their winter diet. In Alaska and Yukon, caribou have been observed munching the fungi.
Fly agaric use is sprinkled throughout folk literature in legend, songs, and poems. One German folk song, “Ein Männlein steht im Walde,” meaning “a little man stands in the forest,” is found in the children’s opera Hansel and Gretel.
It is highly likely that the Celts used the mushroom as well. Derg Corra, a hero of the Celtic otherworld, is famed for his power of leaping, a trait associated in Siberia with ingestion of fly agaric. The epithet Derg Corra means “red-peaked” or “red-pointed,” like the cap.
Brigid, the goddess of poets, was depicted with fires around her head, representing agaric intoxication and the inspiration of poetry and songs.
It is believed by some Celtic and Gaelic scholars that the often-cited hazelnut is a metaphor for A. muscaria. In Celtic legend, hazelnuts are known as cuill crimaind, “the hazels of knowledge,” or bolg fis, “bubbles of wisdom.” This refers to bubbles caused by the nuts falling into the well of wisdom. Bolg is found in both Irish and Scots Gaelic names of mushrooms.
According to Christian Rätsch, there is some evidence that the Beaker People of Stonehenge, and later the Celts, used fly agaric in cult rituals.
The shamans of Siberia and parts of Scandinavia used a drink from mukhumor to induce visions, communicate with the supernatural, divine the future, diagnose illness, and celebrate festive occasions like weddings.
The shaman would control harmful beings, called nimvits, and communication could take place only at night with the mushroom’s aid.
The Chukchee believed the mushrooms to be another tribe and that the visions personified the mushroom and the “mushroom men.” These beings accompanied a person on a voyage through their world, and to visit places where the dead reside.
Both Chukchee and Koryak shamans could be openly homosexual or transvestite. These transvestite shamans, as well as the Pima berache, were considered most powerful. They revered a deity called “the big raven,” a transformer of the world and an ancestor of men.
The Yurk Samoyed reported man-like creatures that appeared before them in a dream. They would run down a path that the sun follows in the evening, and the intoxicated person would follow.
On the journey, the fly agaric spirits would tell him what he wanted to know, and when he returned to the light, he would find a pole with seven holes and cords. When he tied up the spirits, he would awaken. Then he would sit down, taking a symbol of the pillar of the world, a four-sided staff with seven slanting crosses cut into each side, and sing about what he had seen.
The Ostyaks filled their huts with smoke from tree resins, and the shaman took three to seven dried caps, after fasting all day.
Cortez observed Amanita mushrooms being consumed during the coronation of Montezuma. Natives of Mexico believe it comes from drops of God’s sperm and grows from the vulva of Mother Earth, appearing like an erect penis becoming more and more aroused and the cap (woman) penetrated by the stipe.
The Huichol practice wolf shamanism revolving around A. muscaria as “wolf-peyote.” Mark Hoffman posts his analysis at http://homepage.mac.com/photomorphose/ethno.html.
In Guatemala, Amanita is believed to appear when lightning strikes the earth.
The Tzeltal call it “red thunderbolt mushroom” and dry the red skins, combining them with tobacco as a smoke for prophecy and disease diagnosis.
Adrian Morgan, in his book Toads and Toadstools, which is highly recommended, shares his own experience with Amanita, including the ingestion of his own urine, which he found produced the strongest effect.
The Japanese call it beni tengu take, or “scarlet goblin fungus.” According to folklore the tengu were flying wood spirits that took the form of birds or long-nosed humans. Tengu is the spirit of the fly agaric and one of the most popular figures in Japanese mythology. The mushrooms can represent bird-like demons, wild reclusive monks, or transformed shamans.
Male tengu have a phallic nose and are regarded as tricksters or sexual demons, and sometimes benefactors. Mountain shrines have been built in their honor, with fossilized shark teeth considered reminders of their passing. These “claws of tengu” are sold as amulets or talismans.
Tengu carry magical fans or leaves, some of which resemble hemp. The Japanese red kite is identified with tengu. They favor drinking sake, of course.
People in the Sanada region of Nagano are said to use dried A. muscaria as a condiment in food to add the umami flavor to food, or as a base or soup stock. A recent article by Rubel and Arora (2008) has an attached appendix with a recipe for safely preparing A. muscaria for the dinner table.
We cannot be sure that Lewis Carroll knew about the various reports out of Siberia regarding distortion of the senses, but the scarlet and white spotted Amanita muscaria illustrated in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland make me think he did. There are scattered reports in English literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that the hallucinogenic properties of Amanita muscaria were explored by upper-class opium eaters.
The Documents in the Case by Dorothy Sayer is a sixty-year-old whodunit in which a mushroom collector is found dead, apparently mistaking this mushroom for A. rubescens. Although small amounts of muscarine are present in the fungi, the victim’s son refused to believe his father would make such a glaring mistake, and through his sleuthing determined poisoning by synthetic muscarine. A good mushroom mystery!
Herbalist Christopher Hobbs suggests that perhaps it was the original “electric Kool-Aid,” after the adventures of Ken Kesey, Timothy Leary, and others.
Tom Robbins wrote about his experiences with the mushroom in 1976:
I have eaten the fly agaric three times.… Euphoric energy was mine aplenty, but at both the onset and the termination of the intoxication I fell fitfully asleep … if not actually the godhead, is holistic awareness of the godhead. But it does not do this gently.
Instead of slipping one into the cosmic fabric like a silver needle, it drives one in like a wooden stake. And of course, a stake is blunted in the driving. It was not mere psychedelic fickleness that prompted both the olden Greeks and the Mexicans to drop Amanita muscaria cold when they discovered that the innocuous looking little Psilocybe made up in grace what it lacked in flamboyance.
A recent book by Andy Letcher, Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom, is a nice addition to the debate. In his chapter on the fly agaric, he weaves a wonderful journey of the mushroom through art and literature. It is noted that the book was widely embraced in Europe, but critically reviewed and debunked by a number of ethnomycologists on this side of the pond. I enjoyed it.
Amanita Muscaria: Herb of Immortality, an e-book published by Donald E. Teeter, contains some very interesting ideas concerning preparation and resurrection of mycelium from dried caps.
A Koryak legend tells of Big Raven. He had caught a whole whale and cold not send it home because he was unable to lift the bag containing its traveling provisions. He appealed to the Existence to help him. The deity said “find the white soft stalks with the spotted hats—these are the spirits Wa’pag.” Big Raven found and ate the fungus, lifted the bag, and sent the whale home.
—CRUNWELL
There were two brothers who were very hungry, their stomachs empty. Since there were mountains, they climbed up the rocky slopes looking for food. At last they came to a great cave high in the mountainside. It seemed to them that light came out of the cave opening, and when they peered through, they saw a beautiful meadow in which there grew many tall red and white mushrooms—handsome wajaskwedeg—turning and revolving, buzzing and murmuring, singing a strange song of happiness.
Younger brother ran to the tallest, strongest, and reddest mushroom. White fluffs like tuft feathers of a forest war bonnet, waved across the shining cap.
The younger brother became fused to the stipe, and began to grow a bright red cap. Slowly at first, then faster and faster, he began to spin in the sun.
The elder brother ran back to his village to consult the medicine people, about how to rescue his younger sibling.… Which he did!
Many days and nights went by. The elder brother awoke in the morning with a heavy and sad heart, the younger brother, smiling and his heart filled with happiness.
Elder brother noticed that the younger brother went very frequently to urinate behind the wigwam, particularly at full moon. One time, he went to look and his brother was not there. He follows his trail, and sees him standing in the center of an open space with a large number of people around him. The younger brother’s arms are open wide, spread like the umbrella of a mushroom. His robes are beautiful, glowing red, and tufts of white feathers adorn his head. He sings to the people:
Because of my supernatural experience,
in the land of the Miskwedo,
I have a cure to alleviate your ills,
To take away all your unhappiness.
If only you will come to my penis
And take the quickening waters flowing from it
You, too, can be forever happy.
Every time the clouds darken the moon, he urinates. The people catch his urine in birch bark containers. They drink this liquid that has been given to them as a great boon by the Miskwedo spirits.
Poor elder brother! He did not understand the ways of the red-topped mushroom. He worried and was unhappy.
Younger brother did not understand the workings of the Sacred Mushroom. But he went on being happy, and all the people following him continued in a state of bliss. They drink the Elixir of the Great Miskwedo, and much is revealed of the supernatural and other knowledge in this way. It is the kesuwabo—the liquid “Power of the Sun.”
—KEEWAYDINOQUAY, ANISHINAUBERB MEDICINE WOMAN AND STORYTELLER (VERMEULEN 2007)
Often a brew of dried amanita, fireweed, and cow parsnip were made into fermented ale; or the dried mushrooms were soaked in fireweed must. Some authors mention it works synergistically with unripe bog blueberry (V. uliginosum) juice for vision quests.
An expedition led by Dane Vitus Bering, who gave his name to the strait between Russia and Alaska, traveled with the botanist Stefan Krasheninnikov to explore Kamchatka. He wrote that the dried mushrooms were sold for feasts where
The landlords entertain their guests with great bowls of opanga, ’til they are all set a vomiting; sometimes they use a liquor made of a large mushroom, with which the Russians kill flies. This they prepare with the juice of Epilobium.
Georg Steller, on the same expedition, said that when the Koryak find a reindeer intoxicated on fly agaric, they slaughter it, and all those who eat the flesh also become intoxicated.
Scottish poachers would drink a mixture of fly Agaric and fireweed (Epilobium angustifolium) to stay awake for nighttime jobs. This mixture was known as Cathies, named after Catherine the Great, the lusty Empress of Russia, who was said to enjoy the same drink before her well-known conquests. Drinking the urine of those who ingested the drink resulted not only in a stronger effect, but also removed the toxic effects. This could be repeated up to five times before the drug began to lose its potency.
This knowledge may have come about from observations of reindeer being attracted to human urine. When these animals eat the mushroom they acquire a special craving for the urine of human beings, and will frequent dwellings to drink this special urine.
Every Koryak man carries a sealskin vessel, suspended from his belt, to collect urine. The reindeer will be attracted from far pastures to eat this yellow snow. During a festival that is associated with reindeer herding, the dried mushroom is mixed with fresh reindeer blood and drunk to strange music that lasts for three to four days.
One common name in the Kamchatka peninsula is woodpecker of Mars, due to its increase in strength and stamina. In that part of the world, the mushroom is so highly regarded that the words for trance, daze, and drunkenness are derived from the noun meaning “fungus, fly agaric.”
A cold-water extract of the fungus was traditionally rubbed onto the legs of patients suffering snakebite in Siberia.
Physicians of the nineteenth century used it to treat fever and epilepsy.
W. Schneider wrote that “only the lower portion of the stalk is chosen … the fly agaric, in powder form, is administered internally in small doses (ten to thirty grains) against falling sickness, etc., and is sprinkled externally onto malignant tumors, gangrene, etc. Meinhard gives a tincture to treat favus and other persistent eruptions.”
A tincture of the crumbled, dry fungi soaked in vodka for two weeks has been used traditionally in Russia to alleviate joint pain by external application.
In Kamchatka, three small fresh pieces of the mushroom are used to treat sore throat and cancer.
The related strangulated Amanita (A. pseudoceciliae) has been used in Chinese medicine to cure eczema.
A. muscaria: ibotenic acid (0.08–0.1 percent), which converts to muscimol or pantherine; muscarine; muscazone, muscasophine, stizololic, and tricholomic acid, 1,3-diolein, amavadine, R4-hydroxy-pyrrolidone-(2), 1,2,3,4-tetrahydro-l-methyl-B-carboline-carboxylic acid, B-N-b-Butyl-D-glucopyranoside, stizolobic and stixolobinic acids, (-)-4-hydroxypyrrolidine, two hundred milligrams per kilogram of vanadium, betalains, muscaaurins muscapurpurin, and muscaflavins pigments in the cap skin. Muscimol content of fall fungi is 0.05 percent.
Mycelium: muscarine, epi-muscarine, allo-muscarine, and possibly, epiallomuscarine; psychoactive tryptamines; MAO inhibitors; harmine and harmaline; and atropine and scopolamine, albeit in very small amounts.
A. pantherina: same as above, as well as stizolobic, stizolobinic acids, and several unidentified alkaloids and muscimol/ibotenic acid 0.46 percent.
Muscimol is a central nervous system hallucinogen, muscarine a highly toxic hallucinogen. Ironically, they are physiological “opposites”—one is food for the spiritual body and the other poison to the physical. The kidneys detoxify muscarine, but allow muscimol to pass through largely intact. This can be repeated four to five times. Only 30 to 35 percent of muscimol is excreted unchanged, unlike ibotenic acid, which is cleared from the body in ninety minutes.
Muscarine is found in the fresh mushroom at very low concentrations of 0.0003 percent. Much larger amounts are found in many species of Inocybe and Clitocybe mushrooms. In fact, it would take 110,000 kilograms of fresh A. muscaria to deliver a dose of muscarine large enough to be dangerous to humans.
Muscimol and ibotenic acid cross the blood-brain barrier more readily than glutamic acid or GABA. Ibotenic acid excites or stimulates neurons, while muscimol is inhibitory. GABA is an inhibitory neurotransmitter, active at 40 percent of brain synapses, and appears to function, in part, by opening channels in the neuronal membrane specific to chloride ions.
Much of the recorded medical effect with Amanita muscaria comes from Germany. Dr. Reinhard used it successfully to treat cases of paralysis, epilepsy, and chronic catarrh conditions. Dr. M. Paulet used external applications of the plant for cancer and other ulcerous conditions of the skin.
Professor Scudder suggested that a tincture of Amanita muscaria is best for “involuntary twitching of the muscles of the face, forehead, and even the eyes.” He suggested its use for “pressing pain in the occiput and an inclination to fall backwards.”
Felter and Lloyd wrote, “The principal use that has been made of this fungus is to control night sweats from debilitating diseases and profuse sweating during the daytime.”
Dr. Culbreth, another Eclectic physician, says that Amanita “reduces force and frequency of pulse, contracts muscles of intestine and bladder, increases abdominal secretions that lead to paralysis and death.” Obviously great care must be taken with this remedy.
Theodore G. Schurr (1995), an anthropologist and molecular biologist, suggests that “once ingested, the psychoactive alkaloids and substances acted as agonists of normal neurotransmitter function, disrupting the coordinate action between the catecholaminergic and serotoninergic systems and producing hallucinogenic effects similar to those generated by LSD and harmine.”
Ethanol extracts of the fruiting bodies significantly inhibit growth of sarcoma 180.
It is worth noting that some Parkinson’s patients experience symptomatic relief from the homeopathic preparation below. It is interesting that in 1991, a research team at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, isolated DOPA, 4,5-dioxygenase from Amanita muscaria.
Muscimol, obtained from the decarboxylation of ibotenic acid, more potently activates GABA receptors as a selective GABA-A agonist than GABA itself. Muscimol is very active in displacing bicuculline or GABA.
Although a valuable medicine, it can be toxic when fresh. As few as two to four dried mushrooms can alter awareness, while twenty can be neurotoxic. Muscarine stimulates post-ganglionic cholinergic neuroeffector junctions. The isoxazole constituents are psychoactive.
Muscimol appears to pass the blood-brain barrier, with up to 27 percent of muscimol injected into lab mice recovered from urine.
Muscimol is a GABA agonist, with effect at very low dosage. Different parts of the brain, from the cerebral cortex, to hippocampus and cerebellum, appear to possess different sensitivities to muscimol.
It does, however, induce long-term depression in the CA1 region of the hippocampus at concentrations of only ten micromoles.
Ibotenic acid and muscimol are related structurally to glutamate, the main excitatory neurotransmitter, and activate NMDA receptors.
Ibotenic acid is also a potent agonist at group I and group II metabotrophic glutamate receptors, and, like glutamate, it stimulates the production of inositol triphosphates through a G-protein mediated mechanism. It also stimulates phosphorylation of protein kinase C substrates and increases phospholipase D activity, as well as increasing the release of glutamate.
Ibotenate creates neurotoxic and phosphoinositide effect through distinct receptors, which are prevented by MK-801 and enhanced by glycine, further implying NMDA involvement.
Although they differ in mechanism of action, both ibotenic acid and muscimol produce similar subjective and behavioral states. Muscimol is, however, five times as potent as ibotenic acid.
Muscimol increases levels of serotonin, dopamine and acetylcholine, and decreases noradrenaline.
Moldavan et al. (1999) found Amanita extracts two to four times more exciting to brain tissue than L-glutamic acid, with the neuron frequency of spike discharge twice as high in A. pantherina, as compared to A. muscaria.
Amavadine is a vanadyl compound, which accounts for the unusually high vanadium content in the fungus ash.
An enzyme involved in the metabolism of betalain pigments was discovered in Switzerland in 1991. Various cosmetic companies in Russia use fly agaric in creams and lotions, but there is no evidence of efficacy.
Ibotenic acid was patented as a flavor enhancer in 1969, but has never reached grocery store shelves. The closely related monosodium glutamate (MSG), however, is found in many products and is a neurotoxin and excitotoxin with similar activity.
The panther contains stizolobic and stizolobinic acids that exhibit an excitatory action on isolated spinal-cord tissue (Ishida, M. and H. Shinozaki 1988).
The edible Caesar’s mushroom (A. caesarea) fruiting body shows activity against Bacillus subtilis and Staphylococcus aureus (Yamac and Bilgili 2006). Ethanol extracts inhibit sarcoma 180 in mice.
Waldschmidt, a physician who uses the homeopathic mother tincture in his practice reports “one portion (15 to 20 percent) of the patients I have treated with Amanita muscarius had altered dreams during or after the therapy. Especially: dreams of flying with positive contents, dreams reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland, and other pleasant dream experiences. In no case did nightmares occur … following the prescription of fly agaric, almost all of the patients exhibited increased motivation, improved mood, and improved mental and physical well being. Here again it is the dosage that determines that something is not a poison.”
Amanita muscaria is used to treat various neuralgic and spasmodic afflictions, including skin troubles. It is a cerebral excitant with many mental manifestations, including vertigo from sunlight.
One of the predominant characteristics of ingestion is that the slightest pressure causes pain.
Headaches are like icy needles with the desire to keep the head warm. It is best for fevers that are low with a tendency to collapse, with great weakness and spasms of lower limbs.
Typed words seem to move or swim about, or there are floaters in the eye. The eyes and eyeballs twitch with redness and itching.
The menses are early and frequent with severe bearing down pain especially after menopause. The nipples itch and burn, and sex may be painful. Vaginal itching and discharge frequently occur.
There is paralysis and numbness of the extremities with skin itching and burning, and yet the feet are ice cold with poor peripheral circulation. Heartbeat may be irregular or weak, with skipping.
Use 30C for skin that is itchy, red or burning from frostbite.
There may also be dejection, irritability, and reluctance for any form of activity or work, with lack of initiative and mood of despair.
Hyper-excitability of sex drive is accompanied by lack of ability, and great exhaustion following coitus.
The symptoms are made worse in the open, with cold air, after eating, and after sex. Slow movement is the only relief.
Dosage: 3C to 30C potency, and in some cases up to 200C. In skin and mental concerns stick to the lower potencies (Boericke).
Amanita citrina is related to laziness and unconsciousness, coma and lethargy, violent true cholera, and deep stupor.
—ALLEN
Amanita pantherina is related to tingling of the extremities, drowsiness, dizziness with inability to focus eyes, feeling of going to die but unafraid, and very disoriented. Inability to grasp and remember the minor details of everyday life.
—SPOERKE AND RUMACK
The blusher (A. rubescens) is related to vomiting, thirst, cramps, albuminaria, disturbance of sensory function, and anemia.
—BLYTH
Ether extracts of Amanita muscaria contain, in addition to fatty oils, an essential oil characterized by a strong odor peculiar to edible fungi. Distillation of the dry fungi with water vapor produces a small amount of a camphor-like substance called amanitol. It constitutes fine white flocculi, which melt at forty degrees Celsius. The odor is peculiar and somewhat like parsley.
The spores contain 1.4 percent fat, consisting of about 10 percent palmitic and 90 percent oleic acids.
Amanita muscaria essence is for those who have difficulties with self-expression. They include the singer that holds back, or the teacher that finds it difficult to share of self. This essence enables those who are resistant, due to fear of criticism from others.
—PRAIRIE DEVA
Fly agaric essence aids in expanding awareness through the mystery schools of sacrificial love, also for psychotherapy. Can be used for energy levels, vitality, muscle cramps, M.E. and sexual problems. Use after stroke or paralysis.
—SILVERCORD
Flieenpilz fly agar (A. muscaria) essence intensely affects the sixth (third eye) chakra and above. It helps cleanse both our physical and subtle bodies of the residues of psychiatric drugs and similar substances. It can help us gain positive access to higher dimensions.”
—KORTE PHI
Fly Agaric essence helps identify relationships and gives power to withdraw from entanglements. It helps solve the Gordian Knot.”
—MARIANA
Colpaert and Assche (1992) exposed seven species to cadmium. Scleroderma citrinum and Paxillus involtus were strongly inhibited at even one part per million, while A. muscaria was not affected at even fifty parts per million. Willenborg et al. (1990) showed the fungi more tolerant of cadmium and mercury than other species tested. Other work showed thorium is also accumulated (Seeger and Schweinshaut 1981).
Braun-Lullemann et al. (1999) tested the ability of Amanita muscaria to degrade polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and found that it utilized about 50 percent of phenanthrene and 35 percent of chrysene. The related A. excelsa removed the same amount of benzopyrene in four weeks.
S. Keller et al. (1996) identified streptomyces strain AcH 505 to encourage the development of auxofuran that helps the growth of ectomycorrhizal connection between this mushroom and spruce.
Linnaeus described in 1751 how residents of Sweden used it to banish bedbugs. The fresh specimens were pulped and the juice painted with a feather around the corners and cracks where the bugs were believed to hide.
The compound that attracts flies is called 1,3-diolein. After the flies have dined on the juices of the mushroom, the main isoxazole toxin, ibotenic acid, stuns or kills them. A whole mushroom was often suspended from the ceiling in parts of France as a natural insecticide.
Frans Vermeulen, in his fascinating book Fungi, writes “[Amanita muscaria] in potency also attracts and kills flies. While waiting for a few granules of … 200C to dissolve in a glass of water, a patient saw three flies, which seemed to appear out of nowhere, dive into the water and drown.”
Tincture of dried fungus: one part dried cap to five parts 40 percent alcohol.
Extract: five drops of a 1:100 preparation.
Dried powder: three and a half to five grams for 150-pound individual.
Smoking: crumble the dried skin with a small amount of marijuana and smoke for pleasant alteration.
Soup: cut the A. muscaria cap and stalk into thin slices (one-eighth-inch thick) to hasten dissolving of the active constituents. For each 110 grams (four ounces) of mushroom, use one liter or quart of water with one teaspoon of salt. Garlic and bay leaf may be added to the water for flavoring. Bring the water to a rolling boil, then add the sliced mushrooms. Begin timing the cooking once the water returns to a boil. Boil for ten to fifteen minutes, until the mushroom is soft, then drain and rinse (Rubel and Arora 2008).
Special preparation: slice fresh mushrooms vertically into one-centimeter segments and place in a 110-degree Fahrenheit oven until dry. The muscarine will largely evaporate, and the ibotenic acid will be converted into muscimol.
The correct dosage for an adult is three medium-sized dried mushrooms, or approximately five to ten grams.
These are best soaked in warm water to reconstitute. Both the liquid and the reconstituted mushrooms are ingested. The ingestion of one’s own urine will accentuate the experience.
Fasting is critical. Do not eat for four to six hours before ingestion.
Some research suggests that two to three tablespoons of butter or oil will help to mitigate the effects if too much agaric has been ingested, but I don’t think that would help.
According to Donald E. Teeter, carbonated beverages should not be consumed before or after ingesting the mushroom because they may cause muscimol to be re-converted into ibotenic acid, reversing the drying effect and inducing unpleasant symptoms of nausea, cramps, and vomiting, and inhibiting hallucinogenic activity.
For nausea, a single toke of marijuana will give quick relief.
The intake of more than ten grams of fresh mushrooms can lead to loss of coordination, confusion, illusions, and manic attacks. More than a hundred grams can lead to unconsciousness, asphyxiation, and coma. No record of death has ever been recorded, although fifteen caps is considered by some authors, at least in theory, to be a toxic dose. Spring and summer mushrooms have higher concentrations of active compounds, with the fully mature mushroom after sporulation the optimum choice for drying. The August mushrooms are more powerful than those collected in September, but the physical symptom of nausea is more marked and the narcotic and visionary effects less pronounced.
In cases of overdose, use vomiting and sedatives. In case of shock, use a plasma volume expander. Artificial respiration may be needed. Additionally, milk thistle seeds may help prevent Amanita liver poisoning. Many hospitals want to administer atropine, which would potentiate and aggravate the condition.
Amanita are the aristocrats of fungi. Their noble bearing, their beauty, their power for good or evil, and above all their perfect structure, have placed them first in their realm; and they proudly bear the three badges of their clan and rank—the volva or sheath from which they spring, the kid-like apron encircling their waists, and patch-marks of their high birth upon their caps.
—CHARLES MCILVAINE
[Agaricus muscarius] don’t like to be told what to do or to take orders; it’s an extremely awkward inner state of stupid rage showing up as a heroic defiance covering an extremely vulnerable interior.
“You are so mean to me and you don’t care,” “Nobody loves me and I don’t care anymore” are typical reposts of kids.
They are so sensitive they become very defensive, and then they are not intimidated by anyone. This escalates to a combination of explosive temper and disregard for authority or the consequences, with repeated violent threats toward parents.
They become totally fearless. They can also experience episodes of rage with great feats of strength and it’s the remedy for those who do the impossible, Clint Eastwood, Arnold Schwarzenegger. They are like a grenade waiting to explode, so great is the anger.…
Learning to channel this anger is their journey and the purpose of giving the remedy. They can show the opposite face of being easily and deeply upset by discipline, or being told off, or by writing poetry which gives you the clue, the desperately insecure little kid seeking love.… They can be so fearful that they can develop varicose veins from holding back, which is what varicose veins are all about.
—PETER CHAPPELL
Who is this poet of the night?
Ecstasy with inner light
Doesn’t like a thunder storm
His nervous system’s not quite right
I see him twitching through the day
Ear is itching as from hay
Makes a funny face at me
Frostbite, burning spasming
He seems to be a fearless sort
Doing things with danger fraught
But when he came to tell his tale
He complains, his health does fail
He swears it’s cancer on the rise
Every pimple his demise
So disturbed by any sign
I try to tell him it’s benign
And then I heard he joined a troop
That helps a rather sickly group
And since that day he seems improved
But don’t you go and stimulate
This nervous mushroom into state
Best to let him just refrain
You might confuse this poor guy’s brain.
—SYLVIA CHATROUX, MD
(GREEN DEATH CAP)
A. virosa
A. bisporigera
(DESTROYING ANGEL)
A. ocreata
(WHITE DEATH CAP)
Like Death he stalked the ravished land,
His ‘cutting implement’ in hand.
Pale Oyster Mushrooms cried in fear:
“The Mad Mycologist draws near!
“His bloodlust will not be abated
“Until we’re all decapitated.”
He stripped the barren fields and woods
of Chanterelles and Scarlet Hoods.
No Parasol was safe from him.
The Fungus Fiend, the Reaper grim.
Smug Deathcaps smirked: “He won’t hurt us
“For we are much too poisonous.”
Plump Puffballs pleaded as he passed,
And Weeping Widows wept their last.
The Horns of Plenty blew no more,
As Ceps lay slaughtered by the score.
A small voice cried out: “Please don’t eat us!”
The last words of a Bay Boletus.
One day he slew two Agarics
(Defying Bylaw 26)
They gloated: “Ha! We’ve got him now!”
And hauled him off to court in Slough.
“Off with his head!” the jury cried.
“He’s guilty of Mass Fungicide.”
The moral of this tragic tale
Is: “Wickedness must not prevail,”
That he who harms a helpless fungus
Is not fit to dwell amungus,
But he shall go Hell to boil
(or lightly fry in olive oil).
—P. VERSEHOYLE
Amanita virosa
How sinister this mushroom’s deception
Luring with her immaculate
Purity of presence.
Death masquerades as virgin bride with
Remnants of lace upon her cap
And vestiges of veil around her neck.
—JESSIE KEIKO SAIKI, WISCONSIN MYCOLOGICAL SOCIETY NEWSLETTER, SPRING 1983
Toxins present in many deadly poisonous Amanita species include phalloidin, phalloine, and amanitin. They are collectively know as phallotoxins and amatoxins, and have been found in species of galerina and deadly cococybe (C. filaris).
Higher concentrations of muscarine are con-tained in both the inocybe and clitocybe species (3 percent dried) without the other toxins, for a purely cholinergic effect. In the case of ingestion of the related A. phalloides, get medical help immediately, and take a glass of salt water every half hour until you reach the hospital. Steyn (1966) found that three hundred milligrams of alpha lipoic acid daily given in the cases of A. phalloides and A. capensis poisoning as soon as serum transaminase levels were raised restored hepatic and renal function in patients.
Montanini et al. (1999), in a small eleven-patient trial, found acetylcysteine combined with silybin from milk thistle a useful antidote for A. phalloides poisoning.
An antiphalloidin serum has been developed at the Institut Pasteur, but must be administered soon after ingestion.
The blusher (A. rubescens) is considered edible, but not worth the risk of misidentification.
Ten patients with Amanita poisoning who underwent Molecular Adsorbent Recirculating System (MARS) treatment, which helps remove toxins from the blood, were all alive one year later (Kantola et al. 2009).
In a recent case, two people consumed a soup made from A. phalloides and showed symptoms of poisoning nine to fifteen hours after ingestion. Intravenous doses of penicillin G, silibinin, and acetylcysteine prevented further damage and both patients were discharged from the hospital eight days later.
A water decoction of Ganoderma lucidum was given to twelve patients with acute Amanita poisoning and their results were compared to those of patients who were treated with penicillin and reduced glutathione. The researchers found a statistically significant reduction in mortality and recovery rate with reishi treatment (Xiao et al. 2007).
Aucubin, found in herbs like German chamomile, has been found to prevent depression of m-RNA biosynthesis by alpha amanitin intoxication (Chang, I.-M. and Y. Yamaura 1993).
Guang-Sheng Ding and You-Yi Liang (1991) found DMS (dimercaptosuccinic acid) helpful in mushroom poisonings.
Phallolysin from A. phalloides and rubescenslysin from A. rubescens show in vitro disruption of mast cells in rat mesentery, with 90 percent of cells disrupted within five minutes of ingestion.
Death cap (A. phalloides) extracts inhibit the transplantation of Yoshida sarcoma in mice and are believed to provide immune-boosting activity. This mushroom is of European origin but is found widely around the San Francisco Bay Area, south to Los Angeles and north to Vancouver (Pringle et al. 2009).
Amanita phalloides (photo credits 1.1)
Doljak et al. (2001) found that destroying angel inhibits thrombin by 48 percent, but may be of little use due to its toxicity.
Amanita virosa shows activity against Pseudomonas aeruginosa (Damjan et al. 2007)
Amanita phalloides is used to treat liver damage such as acute yellow atrophy or jaundice. It is also useful in paralysis or conditions with progressive physical deterioration. The remedy may be useful in lower potencies for those conditions, and in higher potency for treating neoplasms, including those with hepatic involvement.
Dose: 6C to 200C. The mother tincture is prepared from the fresh A. phalloides. A 2D dilution containing amanitin has been trialed against leukemia, showing stabilization of B-cell chronic lymphatic leukemia. Amanitin stopped the activity of the tumor cells, and then they lyse and migrate. Amanita therapy also showed good results in a variety of other tumors such as colon carcinoma, breast carcinoma, and tongue root tumor.
Antrodia cinnamomea
A. camphorata
(ANTRODIA)
(NIU CHANG CHIH)
A. xantha
Amyloporia xantha
Poria xantha
Daedalea xantha
Chaetoporellus greschikii
(YELLOW PORIA)
A. serialis
Trametes serialis
Coriolellus serialis
D. serialis
P. callosa
Both Antrodia xantha and A. serialis have been found in parts of the Pacific Northwest. In Finland, the latter is known as knolticka.
In Taiwan, cinnamon or camphor Antrodia is known as niu chang and other variations such as niu chang ku, niu chang chih, and jang-jy. The wood it grows on has been used traditionally for high-end furniture; it is becoming rare and is now protected. The mushroom is commonly known as ruby mushroom, and is traditionally used by aborigines to treat alcohol abuse and exhaustion.
Fruiting bodies have sold for $15,000 per kilogram due to their rarity.
It is very bitter and smells of camphor.
Antrodia anserina (photo credits 1.2)
A. serialis: serialynic acid.
A. camphorata: antroquinonol.
Yellow Poria has been found to contain serialynic acid, a phenol with an isopentenyne side chain. It shows a weak inhibition of pathogenic fungi, and anti-Pythium graminicola activity (Kokubun et al. 2007b).
It shows activity against Staphylococcus aureus. Early work by Robbins et al. (1945) found A. serialis, A. heteromorpha, A. malicola, A. vaillantii, and A. rubescens active against Staphylococcus aureus and E. coli.
Work by Shih Chung Chen et al. (2005) found extracted polysaccharides of this mushroom to inhibit endothelial tube formation, with fucose, glucose, and mannose the predominant monosaccharides.
In fact, the polysaccharides isolated from A. xantha provide greater anti-angiogenesis than those from Agaricus brasiliensis and Antrodia cinnamomea. It has a mild taste.
The related cinnamon or camphor Antrodia from Asia shows anti-hepatitis B virus activity with inhibition of 76 percent at a non-toxic concentration of 100 micromoles per milliliter.
Both the fruiting body and mycelia possess antibacterial, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anti-fatigue, and anticancer activity.
They are especially valuable for treating alcohol-induced hepatitis, but also of value in the treatment of diabetes and hypertension, as well leukemia, adenoma, and cancers of the lung, liver, cervix, colon, and breast. One study found a reduction in alcohol-induced fatty liver disease similar to that of silymarin from milk thistle.
Antrodia radiculosa (photo credits 1.3)
Recent research indicates benefit of limiting the growth and proliferation of bladder carcinoma cells (Peng et al. 2007).
Hseu et al. (2006) found inhibition of COX 2 and induction of apoptosis in estrogen nonresponsive breast cancer cells. They later identified pathways of induced apoptosis in human breast cancer cells (Hseu et al. 2008).
Mei-Kuang Lu et al. (2006) found adenosine, a major component, acts through activation of A (2A)-R to prevent serum deprivation-induced PC12 cell apoptosis.
Chia-Yu Chang et al. (2008) found that when combined with antitumor agents it proved to be an effective adjuvant anti-proliferative agent in studies on multi-drug-resistant hepatoma cell lines.
Antroquinonol, isolated from Antrodia, has been found to inhibit breast, liver, and prostate cancer cell proliferation at 0.13 to 6.8 micromoles (Lee, T.-H. et al. 2007).
Methanol extracts show potential anti-inflammatory effects, while both wild and cultivated mycelium show anti-proliferative activity against the Lewis lung carcinoma tumor cell line.
The fruiting body contains new succinic and maleic derivatives that possess anti-inflammatory activity. One compound significantly increased spontaneous TNF-alpha secretion from un-stimulated RAW264.7 cells, but suppressed IL-6 production in LPS-stimulated cells. This suggests both immune stimulating and anti-inflammatory effects (Chien et al. 2008).
Other work suggests vaso-relaxant properties as well as inhibition of androgen responsive prostate cancer cell lines.
Antcin A and B and antrocamphin A have been isolated and found to potently inhibit inflammation. A cytotoxic agent against human leukemia and pancreatic cancer cells, MMH01, was also isolated.
Antrocinnamomin A shows significant inhibition of nitric oxide (Wu, M.-D. et al. 2008).
Geethangili et al. (2009) published a review of pharmacological effects and the bioactive compounds online.
Armillaria mellea
Armillariella mellea
A. ostoyae
A. gallica
A. sinapina
A. nabsnona
(HONEY MUSHROOM)
(BOOTLACE FUNGUS)
(SHOESTRING FUNGUS)
(MUSTARD ARMILLARIA)
A. straminea
A. luteovirens
A. floccularia var. americana
Floccularia straminea
Armilla means “a ring” and mellea means “honey colored.” Armillaria is from the Latin meaning “furnished with an armband,” in reference to the partial veil. Eastern European settlers to the Canadian prairies, including Poles and Ukrainians, know this mushroom as poppien’ka.
The honey mushroom grows in clusters at the base of both deciduous and coniferous trees, or on the stumps and dead wood, where they tend to be somewhat larger. The honey mushroom complex, A. mellea, has now been split into at least eleven distinct biological species in North America.
The caps are honey colored, hence their common name. A lemon-yellow color under their ring is an important clue to keep in mind when searching for this mushroom. With age, the mushroom turns a dark brown, but the ring remains distinctively whitish.
It has white spores, often dusted on the cap, and striations around the edge of that cap.
It occurs in large numbers in the late summer and early fall. It can be gathered and dried, but needs to be processed quickly and efficiently. The mushroom is edible when young, but should be cooked before eating. In late August of 2002, and then again, in 2007, I collected baskets of A. gallica from the river valley near my home.
They are delicious in stews, or simply fried in butter. The mushroom is great when pickled and used later in salads, cream sauces, and even martinis.
They should be well cooked, for when eaten raw or combined with alcohol, they may cause nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea in some sensitive individuals. The German name for the mushroom, hallimasch, is said to be a contraction for “Hölle im Arsch” or “hell in the ass.”
Sesquiterpene aromatic esters including armillaricin, armillarigin, armillarikin, armillarilin, armillarinin, armillaripin, armillaribin, armillaritin, armillarivin, and armillarizin; Sesquiterpene aryl esters; judeol armillyl everninate; armillol; melleolide; nor-sesquiterpene esters armillasin, armillatin; and AMG-I.
Sporophore: E-threitol (C4H10O4), vitamin A. Polysaccharide content is 1.12 percent in the rhizomorph and 2.27 percent in the fruiting body.
Mycelium extract: armillane, volatile organic acids propionic, valeric, isocaproic, and caproic; isobutyric, butyric, isovaleric and hepatonic acids, potassium, iron and manganese, one hundred-sixty micrograms per hundred grams, and copper thirty-three micrograms per hundred grams. The protein content is nearly 30 percent, with 384 calories per hundred grams.
Armillaria mellea (photo credits 1.4)
In traditional Chinese medicine, the honey mushroom is considered cold and sweet tasting—a good nutritive tonic. It is known as mi huan ku.
Honey mushroom tablets are used for the treatment of dizziness, headache, neurasthenia, insomnia, numbness in the limbs, and convulsion in infants.
The fruiting body helps support the intestines and stomach in cases of gastritis and painful digestion, and is used for conditions like poor night vision, weak vision, and dryness of the skin, as well as protection from certain respiratory infections, due in part to its vitamin A content.
Honey mushroom grows in the same areas as the herb tian ma, or Gastrodia elata, which is valued by practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine. The metabolites of the mushroom are similar to some compounds in the orchid, and may be considered for a substitute. Clinical trials have been completed confirming the use for hypertension, anti-spasmodic, and nerve-relaxing properties.
Calming of liver yang and supporting internal wind is another way of explaining its application. Dizziness, Meniere’s disease, tinnitus, vascular headaches, and after-stroke syndromes may benefit from the fermentation liquid of these fungi.
Moody and Weinhold (1972) found rhizomorph production of A. mellea stimulated by oils and fatty acids, especially oleic and linoleic acids.
In vitro, honey mushroom has shown antibiotic action against Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus cereus, and B. subtilis.
Armillaric acid inhibits both gram-positive bacteria and yeasts. Dervilla M. X. Donnelly et al. (1986) showed significant in vitro antibacterial activity against gram-positive bacteria. Melleolide, isolated from the mycelium, has been found to be antibiotic in nature.
Armillaria mellea
The fruiting body, extracted by five different solvents including ethanol, exhibits activity against Staphylococcus aureus (Yamac and Bilgili 2006).
Obuchi et al. (1990) isolated armillaric acid as the antibacterial fraction, and 2-hydroxy-4-meth-oxy-6-methylbenzoic acid, as an anti-fungal.
Ying et al. demonstrated that a polypeptide dextran exhibited antitumor activity. The inhibition rate against sarcoma 180 is 70 percent, and against Ehrlich carcinoma, 80 percent (Ying et al. 1987).
Animal studies have shown honey mushroom to decrease heart rate, reduce peripheral and coronary vascular resistance, and increase cerebral blood flow. It also exhibits cerebral protective effect with AMG-I (a compound isolated from A. mellea) increasing coronary oxygen efficiency without altering blood pressure.
N. Watanabe et al. (1990) isolated AMG-1, an N6-substituted adenosine with cerebral-protecting properties.
A study on the use of armillaria tablets in forty-three patients with hyperlipidemia conducted at the Central Hospital of Shanghai, Jingan District, found an average of 48 percent serum cholesterol change was found, with an effective rate of 83 percent. In patients with elevated triglycerides, the decline averaged 42 percent, and the effective rate for lowering them was 75 percent. The systolic and/or diastolic pressure of 86 percent of patients showed a decline, while symptoms such as dizziness, oppression in chest, nervousness, and other hypertensive symptoms abated.
Patrick Tackaberry with Armillaria mellea
Polysaccharides have been shown to help protect against the negative side effects of exposure to radiation.
One human clinical trial showed A. mellea reduces the symptoms of essential and renal hypertension, as well as neurasthenia, and demonstrated sedative and anti-convulsant activity (Chang, H.-M. and P. P.-H. But 1986).
Studies indicate that honey mushrooms possess antiviral activity when tested against poliomyelitis (Amoros et al. 1997).
Yan-Ping Li et al. (2005) found polysaccharides provide a protective effect caused by cyclophosphamide on mice bone marrow cells.
A fibrinolytic enzyme (metalloprotease) has been identified in the fungi, suggesting a potential use in treating thrombosis.
The mushroom contains significant amounts of copper 330 milligrams per kilogram (Colak et al. 2009).
Shu-Jing Wu et al. (2007) found that ethanol extracts of the mushrooms exhibit significant anti-inflammatory activity by inhibiting NO, iNOS, COX-2, and cytokine production.
It appears that honey mushroom extracts induce maturation of human dendritic cells without inducing cytokine expression (Kim, S. K. et al. 2008). This suggests immune modulation. More recent work found the mushroom induces expression of intracellular adhesion molecule-1 that regulates movement of immune cells to regional inflammatory sites (Kim, Y. S. et al. 2010).
For years, T helper cells were assumed to be either Th1 that remove viruses and bacteria from host cells or Th2 cells that fight parasites, bacteria in blood, and allergens. Then two new Th cells were discovered: regulatory T that dampens the immune system and Th17 that triggers inflammation and autoimmunity. What is interesting is that T helper cells are flexible, and influence from the right molecules can turn off harmful immune responses.
A mycelial tablet, mi huan jun, is produced commercially in China and used for the nervous system. It is also said to strengthen the lungs, intestine, and stomach; prevent dry skin; and aid leg and lumbago pain, rickets, and epilepsy.
The closely related A. tabescens contains armillarisia A, and has been found to be beneficial for cholecystitis and chronic hepatitis. Inhibition rates of 70 percent have been found for both sarcoma 180 and Ehrlich carcinoma.
It contains a compound, armillarisin B, that when extracted with methanol shows inhibition of Gibberella zeae (Shen, J.-W. et al. 2009).
The related yellow-tinged A. straminea contains a lectin that inhibits proliferation of MBL2 cells, HeLa cells, and L1210 cells at low doses. It exhibits potent mitogenic activity toward spleen cells and anti-proliferative activity toward tumor cells (Feng et al. 2006).
The use of Gastrodia corm extract by intramuscular injection gave results similar to those from a twenty-five milligram tablet of Armillaria given orally. In one study of fifty-two cases, the efficacy rates were 83 percent and 81 percent respectively.
Research shows that Armillaria mellea possesses anti-epileptic activity and may be more cost-effective and less toxic than standard anti-epileptic drugs (Ojemann et al. 2006).
Honey mushroom essence will give you guidance and calmness for group consciousness. It can help you to be as one in a collective space. It is a nutritive tonic, sedative, and good for large intestine and stomach.
—SILVERCORD
Dried powder: thirty to ninety grams in tea, capsules, or simply sprinkled on food. Do not consume with alcohol.
Tablets: Three to five 250-milligram tablets or two 400-milligram capsules daily.
Honey mushroom (A. ostoyae) can be quite large. In fact, one colony in Oregon’s Maleur National Forest is nearly four miles across and covers an area equivalent to more than sixteen hundred football fields, or twenty-four hundred acres. It may be twenty-four hundred years old and still growing.
Another honey mushroom (A. bulbosa or A. gallica) mycelium, in the state of Michigan, stretches for some three and a half miles. It has been estimated to weigh more than ninety-one metric tons, covers fifteen hectares, and is estimated to be more than fifteen hundred years old. If you are ever in area, the GPS coordinates are 45° 21’ 28" N by 88° 21’ 46" W, more or less.
Quite recently, an even larger A. ostoyae covering more than eleven thousand acres has been found in Washington state. Paul Stamets refers to these interlacing mosaics of mycelial colonies as the earth’s “natural internet,” a kind of neural network of billions of tons of communicating cells.
The Inca discovered and used Quipu recordings as a series of knots and threads. Computations based on weaving are known as topological, as noted by G. P. Collins (2006) in Scientific American. Vast looped networks result in topological consciousness.
Dr. Ede Frecska writes, “When we use our topological (direct-intuitive-nonlocal) consciousness that’s hidden in the fabric of the sub-cellular matrix, and we liberate it from the suppression of the over dominant perceptual-cognitive-symbolic cognition of ordinary consciousness through the use of particular rituals, we can access the wisdom of the plant kingdom.” Fungi, as well! The author contributes three interesting chapters in Inner Paths to Outer Space, by Rick Strassman and others. A very good read.
At night, you can see a luminous glow from the wood that contains the mycelium and rhizomorphs of this mushroom. Roger Phillips suggests that the magic wands of folklore may have been inspired by fungal-infected wood. Both Aristotle and Pliny describe this glowing wood. Some even relate it to the perpetual burning bush of Moses, but this is unlikely. Many fairytales and legends do concern shining timber in one form or another. One popular Indian story tells of a Siris tree growing in a cemetery that has lights at the end of each of its branches.
Luminous pieces of tree roots were considered powerful sources of magic, and believed to confer the ability to make gold. It is a sign of vigor, as it is respiring cells that generate the luminescence. The effect can last up to eight weeks if the piece of wood is kept damp.
The glowing roots were used as way markers in the Scandinavian forests during long winter nights. During World War I, troops in the trenches would stick a small piece of infected touchwood on their helmets, to avoid nighttime collisions, especially in areas where naked flames and explosives were not compatible.
Keewaydinoquay, a native herbalist, tells of an Ahnishinauberg shaman who placed two luminescent pillars on each side of her doorway, but removed them for fear of scaring more visitors than they attracted.
Phosphorescence in fungi is due to two substances, luciferin and luciferase, that interact in the presence of oxygen and water. It really should be investigated more thoroughly. The optimal temperature for bioluminescence is seventy-seven degrees Fahrenheit, but light has been noted at just one degree above freezing. Maximum intensity occurs around seven thirty in the evening and minimum the next morning at same time.
The radiation emitted by honey mushrooms will pass through cardboard enclosures and develop photographic plates. Even mushrooms grown on artificial media in laboratories emit a greenish glow.
Auricularia auricula
A. americana
A. auricula-judae
Hirneola auricula-judae
(JEW’S EAR)
(WOOD EAR)
(TREE EAR)
A. polytricha
(CLOUD EAR)
(MU ERH)
(BLACK JELLY FUNGUS)
For the cough take Judas Eare, With the parynege of a Peare. And drink them without fear If you will have remedy.
—UNKNOWN
All the sallets are turned to Jewes-Ears, Mushrooms and Puckfists.
—H. AINSWORTH
This interesting jelly fungus grows on elder, spruce, and other trees, in the shape of a human ear. It is also known appropriately as Auricularia auricula-judae, wood ear, or Jew’s ear. Another name for it is Judas’ ear, from the legend that they grew as a curse on the elder tree where the traitor, Judas Iscariot, hanged himself. Boulet suggests the name A. americana is more appropriate as A. auricula-judae is a European species. Hirnea means “a small jug,” hence hirneola.
Cloud ear is named for either its resemblance to the clouds created by the paintbrush in Chinese art, or because dried specimens billow up when soaked in water. The name rat’s ear, or het kanoo, is used in Thailand. Polytricha means “many hairs.”
In Japan, cloud ear is highly prized as an edible mushroom, known as arage kikurage, meaning “tree jelly fish” or “hairy forest jellyfish.”
Wood ear (A. auricula) is called senji, and more often collected from the wild.
Both wood ear and cloud ear are used in mu shu pork, a favorite Chinese dish of both my wife, Laurie, and myself. The latter is known in restaurants as muk nge.
Cloud ear mushroom is cultivated in Asia for use in hot-and-sour soups, and can be purchased dried in Asian food stores. It expands five times when soaked in hot water.
One study found that a mixture of sawdust and cornstalk, packed in plastic bags and maintained on ground, led to faster and more abundant cultivation of A. auricula, leading to more economical mass production.
A. polytricha contains various polysaccharides, hetero-polysaccharide glucans, and acidic heteroglycans; erogsterol, cephalin, sphingo-myelin.
The distinct odor is due mainly to dihydro-5-pentyl-2(3H)furanone acid.
In traditional Chinese medicine, the cloud ear is considered very beneficial, giving lightness and strength to the body and strengthening the will.
Auricularia auricula
The Chinese consume it for mental and physical energy. It is considered a specific for bleeding, especially from the uterus and hemorrhoids. It nourishes the lungs, replenishes energy after childbirth, and improves blood circulation. It is specifically useful in postpartum thrombo-phlebitis, blood clotting and inflammation of the veins after delivery. It has also been used in China for thousands of years for hemorrhoids and as a stomach tonic. Traditionally, it was boiled in milk or alcohol and used to treat inflammations of the throat. According to Berkeley in 1857, the fungus “owed its reputation in throat cases, probably to the fancied resemblance of its hymenial surface to the fauces.” That is, the doctrine of signatures reflects that the hymenium or spore-producing surface of the fungus suggests a resemblance to the throat.
Linnaeus wrote in his Materia Medica that wood ear is used in eye complaints, inflammations, and angina. In parts of central Ireland, it was traditionally boiled in milk for treating jaundice, and in the Highlands of Scotland decocted as a gargle for sore throat.
In Germany, the dried fungi are soaked overnight in rose water and applied to styes and infected eyelids (Wells 1994).
The dried wood ear is soaked in vinegar for several hours and then chewed for weakness after childbirth, or cramping and numbness.
For irregular uterine bleeding, the mushroom is stir-fried, and then boiled until soft and served with brown sugar.
This mushroom was used traditionally in folk medicine in Hong Kong to thin blood and reduce clotting problems in postpartum women.
In the early 1970s, wood ear mushroom began to be more widely served in North American Chinese restaurants. Some diners noted blotchy hemorrhages on their face the day after eating them. This became known as the Szechwan purpura. This led, in turn, to research and discovery of a new anticoagulant to break up blood clots.
Researchers reported in the journal Thrombosis and Haemostasis that even when tree ear mushrooms are chemically treated to remove adenosine, they still inhibit blood clotting in animals.
Auricularia species help achieve a balance in secretions of pancreatic enzymes; and help regulate glycogen production, storage, and breakdown of bioavailable monosaccharides by the liver.
This leads to better control of hypoglycemia and diabetes, keys to maintaining a vigorous immune response.
In clinical studies by Wasser and Weis (1999), anti-tussive effects in wood ear were discovered.
Sang-Chul Jeong et al. (2004) found submerged cultures of A. auricula-judae produce an anti-complement exo-polymer with 70 percent activity. Optimal growth and production of the exo-polymer was found at pH 6, twenty-five degrees Celsius and pH5 and twenty-five degrees Celsius respectively.
Acharya et al. (2004) evaluated the antioxidant activity of A. auricula and found significant radical scavenging activity as well as significant production of nitric oxide.
Wood ear mycelium extracted with ethanol at two milligrams per milliliter showed an 80.2 percent antioxidant activity (Asatiani et al. 2007).
This species has been shown to lower blood glucose and reduce total cholesterol levels, as well as “bad” cholesterol levels.
The mushroom contains a polysaccharide with activity on blood coagulation, platelet aggregation, and possibly on thrombosis. Seon-Joo Seon-Joo Yoon et al. (2003) found alkali extracts showed significant anticoagulant activity.
The mushroom’s anti-platelet activity is similar to that of aspirin, without side effects, such as stomach bleeds. This makes it a good choice for intermittent claudication, where there is leg pain after exercise. It helps blood thinning without the harmful effects on collagen fiber of the blood vessels associated with pharmaceuticals. Recent work suggests the polysaccharide could improve heart function, due in part to strong antioxidant activity (Wu, Q. et al. 2010).
Wood ear shows inhibition of sarcoma 180 from 42 to 60 percent and Ehrlich carcinoma of 80 percent (Ohtsuka et al. 1973).
The constituents of wood ear have stimulated DNA and RNA synthesis by human lymphocytes in vitro, suggesting immune tonic activity. Anti-ulcer, anti-mutagen, and anticoagulant properties also exist. The mushroom helps lower total cholesterol, triglyceride, and lipid levels.
H. P. Zhou et al. (1989) also reported on the anti-hepatitis, anti-mutagenic, and anti-aging effects of wood ear.
Ying et al. (1987) cited anti-hypertensive activity.
They exhibit anti-aging properties, by lowering the lipofuscin content of heart muscles and increasing the SOD activity of the brain and liver. The mushroom is an monoamine oxidase-inhibitor (MAOI), and shows definite activity in cases of chronic bronchitis.
Adenosine has been isolated and reported to inhibit platelet aggregation (Markhija and Bailey 1981). The ingestion of this fungus as food was reported to reduce the chance of heart attack (Hammerschmidt 1980). A combination of this mushroom with hawthorn berry has been developed for its antioxidant and anti-hyperlipidemic properties (Luo, Y. et al. 2009).
Dong Hyun Kim et al. 1996 showed the mushroom exhibits inhibitory effect of Helicobacter pylori urease related to stomach ulcer formation.
Zuomin Yuan et al. (1998) found water-soluble polysaccharides from A. polytricha possess hypoglycemic effect. A water-insoluble glucan, similar to beta 1,3 D-glucan and beta 1,6 D-glucan, has been isolated from fruiting bodies.
Auricularia auricula (photo credits 1.8)
It restricts the growth of Bacillus cereus, E. coli, Proteus vulgaris, and Staphylococcus aureus (Gbolagade and Fasidi 2005).
Potent activity against sarcoma 180 has also been found (Misaki et al. 1981).
The related A. mesenterica inhibits sarcoma 180 and Ehrlich carcinoma cell lines by up to 60 percent, while A. polytricha is 90 percent and 80 percent effective respectively.
The related A. delicata, a tropical species, is used to enrich blood, lubricate lungs, and stop hemorrhage. It helps to heal hemorrhoids and build up strength.
Fifteen grams in decoction or powder two times per day. Wood ear inhibits platelet aggregation, with effects lasting for several days. Use cautiously with blood-thinning medications. Women may observe a heavier menstrual bleeding after a meal of these mushrooms. Extracts have been shown to prevent egg implantation in animals, terminating early and mid-pregnancy, suggesting it be avoided by pregnant women or those wishing to conceive.
Mycophagy has been documented for at least twenty-two primates, including gorillas, lemurs, and monkeys. Most spend less than 5 percent of their feeding time on fungi. The Goeldi’s Monkey (Callimico goeldlii) from South America, however, devotes 63 percent of its time to the consumption of A. auricula, T. mesenterica, and other fungi. This small monkey weighs only five hundred grams and yet may consume more than six kilograms of fresh fungi per year. By comparison, humans in North America consume an average of less than two kilograms of fresh mushrooms annually.
An interesting article by Amy Hanson et al. (2003) discusses this interesting phenomenon, made even more so when one considers that these animals are not foregut fermenters and would, therefore, receive very little nutrient from ingestion of these mushrooms.
Terence McKenna suggested that human ancestors first surpassed their monkey cousins when they sought out and ingested hallucinogenic mushrooms—a suggestion not shared by all evolutionary biologists, but interesting nonetheless.
Battarrea stevenii
(DESERT DRUMSTICK)
Battarrea is named after A. S. A. Battarra, the Italian mycologist. Stevenii is named for the Finnish botanist Christian Von Steven.
Desert drumstick is a tough and stringy mushroom that releases very sticky spores later in life. It is found in arid and semi-arid regions, and looks like a spiraling tower with a small spore sac on top.
When dried under the sun, the peridium of the sporophore can be used to reduce swelling, stop bleeding, and relieve internal heat and fever.
Bjerkandera adusta
Gloeoporus adustus
B. fumosa
(SMOKY POLYPORE)
Smoky polypore grows in overlapping, shelflike ripples on poplar logs and stumps. The small pore surface is gray or black, with whitish margins when young.
The closely related smoky gilled polypore (B. fumosa) is widespread throughout North America. In fact, there is some debate whether or not the two are similar enough to be considered variations of the same fungi. B. fumosa is larger and thicker, with larger spores, and a stronger anise-like or unpleasant smell. Both are inedible.
B. fumosa: chlorinated p-anisyl metabolites (CAM aldehydes and alcohols), chlorinated 4-hydroxybenzoic acid derivatives, chlorinated hydroquinone derivatives, and veratryl chloride; as well as trametol (also found in Trametes), erythro-1 (3’,5’-dichloro-4’-methoxy-phenyl), 1,2-propane-diol; and 1-(3’-chloro-4’-methoxyphenyl)-3-hydroxypropan-1-one.
In China, where the fungus is prevalent, it is used for uterine cancer. It contains a lanostane-type triterpene demonstrated to have T-cell-stimulating activity.
Inhibitory, cytostatic, and antifungal activities have been observed for both the dichlorinated aldehyde and alcohols it contains.
Both mycelium and fruiting bodies of the Bjerkandera species have been studied for medicinal properties. The fruiting body shows higher proliferation than mycelium on spleen cells, suggesting stimulation of B-lymphocytes.
A stimulating effect on both interleukin-1beta and interleukin-8 (pro-inflammatory cytokines) was found, but no influence on interleukin-2.
Zaidman et al. (2007) found both mycelium and culture broth of B. adusta inhibit MCA-kb2 and MCF-7 breast cancer cells, as well as PC-3, DU 145 and LNCaP prostate cancer cells.
Extracts were found to suppress the over-stimulated immune system suggesting a use in allergies and autoimmune disease (Shamtsyan et al. 2005).
Jauregui et al. (2003) found B. adusta helps transform organo-phosphorus pesticides. Yuxin Wang et al. (2003), from the University of Alberta, found oxidation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) more active in the absence of manganese.
Bjerkandera species have been found to oxidize phenanthrene, suggesting a role in mycoremediation (Terrazas-Siles et al. 2005).
Mineralization of phencyclidine (PCP) has been shown in this species, but it is not as efficient as oyster mushrooms (Ruttimann-Johnson and Lamar 1997).
The Bjerkandera spp. strain BOS55 was found to degrade anthracene, benzopyrene, and decolorize Poly R-478 (Field et al. 1992; Kotterman et al. 1998). The anthracene was degraded by 99.2 percent in only twenty-eight days. It degraded 16 PAHs from polluted soil extracted with either 2 percent acetone or ethanol (Field et al. 1996).
The fungi were shown to be the most active degrader of polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) congeners (Beaudette et al. 1998).
Bjerkandera adusta (photo credits 1.9)
Bjerkandera adusta reduced the EC20 values from seventy-two to ten after seven days during transformation of HRV5 (Heinfling et al. 1997). They also found it reduced nickel by about 30 percent in an initial HRB thirty-eight concentration of two hundred milligrams per liter. After seven days the EC50 value reduced to nine from thirty-seven.
One study demonstrated that after only three days of incubation, B. adusta removed 56 percent of fluorene and 38 percent of anthracene.
Three phenylurea-based herbicides were tested for degradation by one hundred fungal strains, and B. adusta gave the best results. In two weeks, the fungi depleted 98 percent chlortoluron, 92 percent diuron, and 88 percent isoproturon (Khadrani et al. 1999).
This fungus and oyster mushrooms were found to degrade styrene almost completely within forty-eight hours with the addition of lignocellulosic materials (Braun-Lullemann et al. 1997). The use of white rot fungus mycelium for mycofiltration of polluted air is an exciting prospect.
Kornillowicz-Kowalska et al. (2005) found B. adusta strains capable of decolorizing and decomposing the cytostatic xenobiotic from post-production of daunomycin. A related study by Belcarz et al. (2005) found the presence of humic acid from brown coal helped synthesize significant amounts of laccase and lipase. This ability could be useful in constructing new biologically active filters for purification of drinking water contaminated by humic acids.
Markus Thormann (past president of the Alberta Mycological Society) et al. (2002) found a fungus similar to B. adusta caused the greatest mass breakdown in spruce wood chips.
Bjerkandera species were tested and found effective in degrading nonylphenol, an endocrine-disrupting compound. Less than 1.3 percent of the chemical remained in the soil after five weeks of incubation.
Work in Portugal suggests that lignin peroxidases of Bjerkandera species are closely related to those from Trametes versicolor.
Simmer dried slices of B. fumosa in water, using a 1:10 ratio, and drink one cup twice a day after meals. One kilogram (about 2.2 pounds) constitutes a treatment, according to Hobbs and others.
Boletopsis leucomelaena
Albatrellus leucomelaena
B. subsquamosa
Boletus leucomelas
(KUROKAWA)
(KUROTAKE)
B. grisea
(GRAY POLYPORE)
This variable mushroom has several species names, depending upon the cap color, ranging from gray to blue to black. They are all the same polypore, found mainly under spruce and pine. Leucos means “white,” melas is “black,” and grisea is “gray.”
It is a popular and sought after bitter edible in Japan.
The fruiting bodies contain leuco-peracetates of telephoric acid and cycloleucomelone.
Takahashi et al. (1992) isolated a series of terphenyl compounds, B1 I-V, that show inhibition activity of 5-lipoxygenase suggestive of antioxidant activity. Further work concluded these compounds to be a series of cycloleucomelone-leucoacetates.
The mushroom possesses a partial amino acid sequence similar to Agaricus bisporus lectin agglutinin. The Kurokawa lectin inhibits proliferation of human monoblastic leukemia U937 cells, due to apoptosis. Yu Koyama et al. (2002) identified this lectin as the first mushroom lectin with apoptosis-inducing activity.
A lectin from B. leucomelaena has been found to cause apoptosis in human leukemic U937 cells. More recent work by Yu Koyama et al. (2005) suggests involvement of G2/M cell cycle arrest.
Early work found polysaccharides from the mycelium inhibit growth of sarcoma 180 and Ehrlich carcinoma by 80 percent and 70 percent respectively.
The gray polypore (Boletopsis grisea) exhibits free-radical scavenging ability, due in part to p-terphenyl compounds (Liu, J. et al. 2004).
Early work by Robbins et al. (1945) identified pleurotin, also found in oyster mushrooms. It was mildly inhibitory to S. aureus, Bacillus mycoides, and B. subtilis.
Boletus erythropus
(SLENDER RED PORED BOLETE)
B. regius
(RED CAPPED BUTTER BOLETE)
B. chrysenteron
B. truncatus
Xerocomus chrysenteron
X. truncatus
(RED CRACKED BOLETE)
B. badius
X. badius
(BAY BROWN BOLETE)
B. calopus
(BITTER BOLETE)
Xerocomus rhodoxanthus
Phylloporus rhodoxanthus
(GILLED BOLETE)
B. pulverulentus
X. pulverulentus
(INKSTAIN BOLETE)
Slender red pored bolete (B. erythropus) is found under coniferous trees such as spruce and fir. It is considered poisonous and added only for interest regarding its medicinal potential.
Bay bolete is an excellent edible and, for some reason, is often maggot-free. It dries well.
Bitter bolete is common to western North America under mixed forest and conifers at higher elevation.
Gilled bolete has been having a hard time finding its true identity. It looks very much like B. subtomentosus, but has bright yellow gills. It is edible, but according to Arora, insipid and slimy, so let’s leave it at that.
The eastern B. speciosus, or B. pseudopeckii, is a good edible.
In China, B. speciosus, or B. pseudopeckii, is used to cure indigestion and abdominal distension by decocting six grams of dried fruiting body and drinking the water twice daily.
Its inhibition rate against both sarcoma 180 and Ehrlich carcinoma is 100 Percent.
Various internet sites report that it contains unidentified hallucinogens and that ingestion of one hundred grams of fresh mushrooms will cause psychotropic effects. I would not recommend it.
Research suggests tryptamine and possibly putrescine content (Smith 1977). The taste and odor are due to piperitone.
The rose-colored B. regius is edible, and although not as tasty as king bolete (what is?), has a wonderfully dense flesh. It is more common in British Columbia and south to California, under both hardwoods and conifers.
It has an inhibition rate against sarcoma 180 of 80 percent and against Ehrlich carcinoma of 90 percent.
Red cracked bolete contains five organic acids, including citric, ketoglutaric, succinic, fumaric, and malic. The latter comprises 89 percent of the acids. It is difficult to tell B. chrysenteron from B. truncatus, unless you look at the spores of the latter that are truncate, or flattened at one end, under a microscope. No asorbic acid is found.
The related Xerocomus nigromaculatus naturally contains 1-beta-D-arabinfuranosyl-cytosine, a synthetic cancer drug.
Bay brown bolete may be able to bind radioactive cesium to a pigment called norbadione A. This discovery could lead to mycoremediation of an element with a thirty-year half-life (Garaudee et al. 2002). It also accumulates silver (Komarek et al. 2007).
Bay bolete shows inhibition against sarcoma 180 and Ehrlich carcinoma by 60 percent and 70 percent respectively.
The mushroom exhibits some antioxidant activity and contains L-theanine, a compound extracted from green tea that exhibits mind-relaxing activity. It also contains tryptophan, tryptamine, and serotonin, which may help explain its slumber potential (Muszynska et al. 2009).
Methanol extracts of the fruiting body of the bitter bolete show potent free radical-scavenging activity. Jin Woo Kim et al. (2006) identified the lactone calopin B, in addition to known cyclocalopin A, with IC50 values of 1.2 to 5.4 micrograms per milliliter.
Bitter bolete contains cyclopinol, cyclocalopin A, and 0-acetyl cyclocalpin A. Related species such as B. radicans, B. coniferarum, B. rubripes, and B. peckii also contain this bitter principal (Hellwig et al. 2002).
Gilled bolete shows antitumor activity with 90 percent and 80 percent inhibition of sarcoma 180 and Ehrlich carcinoma cancer cell lines respectively. So does the related B. pulverulentus. The widespread B. rubellus has similar rates of inhibition.
B. edulis var. clavipes
B. clavipes
(KING BOLETE or CEPE)
(PENNY BUN) (PORCINI)
(CLUB FOOTED BOLETE)
My voice
Becomes the wind
Mushroom hunting.
—SHIKU
Some species of fungi appear to have that prize of Fairyland—the Wishing Cap—and by its power be able to take on any form they please. Boletus edulis is one of them. Its variableness is puzzling.
—MCILVAINE
Boletus means “the best kind of mushroom,” and edulis means “edible.” Boletus may come from the Greek bolites, derived from bolos meaning “clod” or “lump,” suggesting the shape of the mushroom. Pennybun is named for the cap, which is shaped like a small loaf of bread, and a white bloom that resembles flour dusted on baked goods. The club footed bolete is very similar in appearance.
The name porcini has always puzzled me, as in Italian this means “little pig.” The Suillus genus is from the Roman suilli for “hog fungi,” which suggests confusion in early times and today.
The Romans prized boleti, as they were known, and cooked them in special vessels called boletaria. The celebrated poet Martial wrote in the first century AD: “Gold and silver and dresses may be trusted to a messenger, but not boleti.”
Boletes are often called squirrel’s bread, and tooth marks on the caps are often found. Small, tight, raw specimens add a leafy richness to salads. Larger specimens are best cooked.
In the eighteenth century, the French-born king Karl Johan XIV and other Swedish aristocracy loved to eat boletes. The people named this mushroom karljohan in his honor.
Whole, dried cepes, exported from Poland, are considered by many chefs to be the best in quality. Maybe.
King bolete is a good grilling mushroom, but they really shine as a dried and reconstituted elixir. The mushrooms should not be musty, but woodsy with an overtone of leather. The related Suillus is sometimes snuck into dried packages from Europe, but adds a slightly acrid odor.
Boletus edulis
Canned cepes can be found in Germany and Switzerland, and frozen versions are sold in Spain. Though many have attempted to cultivate it, the mushroom has refused to cooperate.
Suetonius tells a story that Emperor Tiberius gave Sabinus two hundred thousand sesterces (about five thousand dollars) for making up a conversation between boleti, oyster, thrushes, and beccaficos (small birds), as to which of them deserved the title of “best food.”
Pliny recorded that “Glaucias thinks boleti are good for the stomach.” He also wrote that “these are good as a remedy in fluxes from the bowels, which are called rheumatismi, and for fleshy excrescences of the anus, which they diminish and in time remove; they remove freckles and blemishes on women’s faces; a healing lotion is also made of them, as of lead, for sore eyes; soaked in water they are applied as a salve to foul ulcers and eruptions of the head and to bites inflicted by dogs.”
Juvenal wrote “doubtful fungi shall be served to his clients, the boletus to the lordly patron.”
Lumberjacks from Bohemia consumed the mushroom believing it protected them against cancer. They were right!
In Latvia, the mushroom is used to treat stomach aches, chilblains, and stenocardia.
It is a part of the Tendon Easing Pills that are used in China to cure lumbago, pain and numbed limbs, discomfort in tendons and bones, tetany, and leucorrhoea.
Dried boletus contains nearly 52 percent protein, which is high for a mushroom, and nearly 80 percent of this is digestible. Boletus also contains eight essential amino acids.
Boletus edulis has the highest organic selenium count of any mushroom, perhaps explaining, in part, its antitumor activity. It also contains high levels of organic gold at 235 nanograms per gram.-1
It accumulates mercury, concentrating this heavy metal by up to two hundred and fifty times, as well as cadmium by ten times, suggesting mycoremediation potential, and also urging caution in where one picks the fruiting bodies.
Studies at the Sloan-Kettering Institute have shown antitumor effect from extracts of Boletus edulis. The fruiting body has inhibition rates against sarcoma 180 of 100 percent, and against Ehrlich carcinoma of 90 percent. The water extracts contain four active ingredients, including a peptide.
Back in the 1950s, B. edulis advanced to the test phase in the treatment of cancer by natural substances.
Polysaccharides have been shown to produce neutralizing effect on inflammation mediators. In animal studies these caused lymphocyte counts to increase.
Studies from Poland show vaso-protective action by polysaccharides (Grzybek et al. 1992).
The mushroom showed neuronal brain damage inhibition in work by Moldavan et al. (2001).
It contains variegatic and xerocomic acid that has been shown to inhibit cytochrome P450 in a manner similar to erythromycin and cimetidine. This should be considered when concurrently taking drugs with significance to half-life and dosage (Huang, Y.-T. et al. 2009). This relates to the ability of the liver to detoxify.
In king bolete, 66 to 91 percent of the total organic acid content is malic and quinic acid, with minor amounts of succinic, oxalic, and fumaric acids. No ascorbic acid is found in either.
The edible Boletus owes its pleasant smell to a volatile oil. Distillation of the dried fungi yields .056 percent of a dark brown oil that melts at thirty-four degrees Celsius.
Although produced for the culinary market, the oil does present some interesting notes for the aromatherapy, brewing, and perfume industries.
Penny bun essence is for those on a spiritual quest. It helps one come closer to Mother Earth and her message. It is a good cleanser and immune booster.”
—SILVERCORD
King bolete essence helps one develop a firm stand in life. Fixed roots without soil cause a stake in cosmic energy. It helps give solid anchorage and protection.”
—MARIANA
Nine grams three times per day, decocted in water.
Boletus edulis
Even fungi have fungi, and the king bolete and other Boletus are susceptible to attack.
Sepedonium chrysopermum, also called Hypomyces chrysospermus, form a mass of yellow powder on the mushroom, which is used to cure external bleeding, by sprinkling and applying it onto cuts and wounds.
(PALE YELLOW BOLETE)
(LURID BOLETE)
B. satanus
(SATAN’S BOLETE)
(DEVIL’S BOLETE)
B. pulcherrimus
B. eastwoodiae
(RED PORED BOLETE)
(ALICE EASTWOOD’S BOLETE)
B. piperatus
Chalciporus piperatus
Suillus piperatus
(PEPPERY BOLETE)
B. spadiceus
Xerocomus spadiceus
Boletus luridus and B. satanus are poisonous and, after being diluted to homeopathic potencies, are used medicinally. At one time, it was believed that blue-green streaks in boletes indicated a poisonous species, but this is not always true! These two are toxic due to their content of muscarine and, indeed, turn blue-green when cut or bruised.
Steve Trudell, in his excellent book Mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest, writes, “the usual advice is that no red-pored, blue-staining boletes should be eaten and, indeed, some are known to be quite poisonous.”
The color change is due to boletol (a chromagen) reacting with laccase (an enzyme) in the presence of both moisture and oxygen. That being said, an article on the “Little People” of Yunnan by David Arora (2008) regards the ingestion of undercooked blue-staining boletes in this province of China. He observed nearly twenty species being sold and was told to stir-fry them for ten minutes. When he asked what would happen if he didn’t, the vendor said, “Well, then you will see the little people.”
Boletus luridus has a similar alcohol-sensitizing action as Coprinus species, Verpa bohemica, and Clitocybe clavipes. It contains muscarine and coprine. Boletus satanas contains small amounts of muscarine. It is eaten after cooking in parts of the Czech Republic and Italy.
Red pored bolete, found in the Pacific Northwest, possesses muscarinic effects and should be avoided. In 1994, a couple picked and dined on this mushroom. Both became ill with severe gastrointestinal distress, and the husband died of midgut infarction.
Peppery bolete contains some unusual pulvinic acid dimmers and a yellow-staining chalcitrin. It contains toxins and is too bitter to eat anyway.
Satan’s bolete may be psychotropic as it contains indolic and isoxazolic derivatives. It is a gastrointestinal irritant that is not recommended. In the Italian dialect of Trentino, this mushroom is known as brisa matta, suggesting the idea of madness.
The related B. manicus, from Papua New Guinea, is reportedly psychoactive, as the locals become crazed under the influence, but this may be due to ritualized cultural mania. It looks very similar to B. satanus, which is red, has a spongy undersurface, and stains blue when bruised (Heim 1972).
The ammonia scented, blue-staining B. spadiceus is inedible, but contains a lectin with hemagglutinating activity was only inhibited by inulin (Liu, Q. et al. 2004).
Pale yellow bolete is recommended for the treatment of violent pains in the epigastrium (the upper central region of the abdomen) and in urticaria tuberosa (unceasing and itchy swellings).
Satan’s bolete is used more often for treating dysentery or vomiting seen along with great debility, cold extremities, or spasms of the extremities and face (Boericke).
Both used in the first attenuation. The mushrooms are dried and powdered and then diluted with milk sugar powder to the required potency.
B. mesenterica
(GIANT MOUNTAIN POLYPORE)
This mushroom is named after A. S. Bondartsev, a mycologist who studied polypores. Montana means “of the mountains.”
This is an unusual polypore, growing under old conifers, especially fir, or Western red cedars. On a stump, it can form large fruiting bodies for many years. It has a mild anise-like odor and a bitter taste. It is edible and was used traditionally as an antidote for poisonous wild mushrooms.
Montadial A (monoterpenoid).
Montadial A exhibits cytotoxic effects against lymphocytic leukemia in mice (L1210 tumor cells) as well as promyelocytic human leukemia (HL60 cells) at ten and fifteen micrograms per milliliter, respectively (Sontag et al. 1999).
Bridgeoporus nobilissimus
Oxyporus nobilissimus
(NOBLE POLYPORE)
(FUZZY SANDOZY)
O. populinus
Polyporus connatus
P. populinus
Fomes connatus
(POPLAR POLYPORE)
The noble polypore is a perennial, native to the old-growth forests of Washington and Oregon, where it is a protected species.
These mushrooms can be massive and at one time were listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest mushrooms ever found. One three-by-five-foot specimen, found in 1943, weighed more than three hundred pounds.
Not only is the size remarkable, but so is the fact that they grow exclusively on very large old-growth trees, including fir and western hemlock. It has a soft, spongy surface, and is covered with a hairy, fur-like coat. It is a cause of brown rot, and thus has been moved to its own genus, as Oxyporus is a white rot species.
Not much is known of it, but on a recent foray for oyster mushrooms, I found a similar small specimen growing on sanctuary land in western Alberta, Canada. It was, unfortunately, growing on a poplar and thus was probably O. populinus. This is considered an eastern variety growing on maples and other hardwoods. And yet here it was in western Alberta!
The Rainforest Mushroom Genome and Mycodiversity Preservation Project recently awarded Meg Cowden of Oregon State University a research grant to study the former fungi. For more information go to www.mycodiversity.org.
The fruiting body has a beta glucan content of 38.5 percent. For comparison, reishi contains only 25 percent.
Perhaps O. populinus should be studied for similar beta-glucans. The related O. corticola shows antitumor, antifungal, and antibacterial activity, including activity against Staphylococcus aureus.
Khadrani et al. (1999) found Oxyporus species useful in degrading three different phenyl urea-based herbicides.
(STAGHORN JELLY FUNGUS)
Staghorn jelly has bright yellow to orange antler-like rubbery branches. It looks, at first glance, like a Clavulina.
It contains 5HTP, which is a precursor to serotonin and then to melatonin (Kohlmunzer et al. 2000).
Inhibition of sarcoma 180 and Ehrlich carcinoma cancer cells is 90 percent (Ohtsuka et al. 1973).
Calocybe carnea
Clitocybe socialis
Lyophyllum carneum
Tricholoma carneum
(PINK CALOCYBE)
C. gambosa
(CREAM CALOCYBE)
(ST. GEORGE’S MUSHROOM)
Pink calocybe is a white-spored, pink-capped lawn mushroom found in fairy rings. Carnea means “flesh-colored.” It is also found among the moss of a spruce bog.
Cream calocybe grows in open woods in the form of roadside fairy rings. It is a fall mushroom with a rich, mealy scent and a nutty flavor when cooked.
It is called St. George’s mushroom in England, where it pops up around the time of St. George’s Day (April 23). According to some cookbooks, it goes well with chicken.
Laboratory testing has shown an inhibition rate against Ehrlich carcinoma of 100 percent and against sarcoma 180 of 90 percent.
The mushroom contains hypoglycemic properties that are worthy of investigation (Brachvogel 1986).
Activity against Bacillus subtilis and E. coli has been noted (Keller, C. et al. 2002).
Calvatia bovista
C. utriformis
C. caelata
Handkea utriformis
Lycoperdon utriforme
(CHECKERED PUFFBALL)
(MOSAIC PUFFBALL)
C. gigantea
Lycoperdon giganteum
Langermannia gigantea
(GIANT PUFFBALL)
C. booniana
(GIANT WESTERN PUFFBALL)
Lycoperdon umbrium
(AMBER PUFFBALL)
Bovista plumbea
(LEAD COLORED PUFFBALL)
(TUMBLING PUFFBALL)
L. pyriforme
Morganella pyriformis
(PEAR SHAPED PUFFBALL)
L. candidum
L. marginatum
C. candidum
(SNOW WHITE PUFFBALL)
L. perlatum
L. gemmatum
(WARTED/GEM PUFFBALL)
B. dermoxantha
B. pusilla
L. pusillum
L. erictorum
(SMALL TUMBLING PUFFBALL)
L. hiemale
Vascellum pratense
V. depressum
(WESTERN LAWN PUFFBALL)
(MEADOW PUFFBALL)
B. nigrescens
(BLACK PUFFBALL)
I found a giant puffball, weighing twenty pounds
I took it home, sliced it into perfect juicy rounds,
I fried each slice with ginger and spices that I knew
Served it up, gulped it down, it tasted like tofu!
—RDR
Author with giant western puffball (Calvatia booniana)
Lycoperdon pyriforme. Note the deflated, dead puffballs alongside growing fungus. Right and below: Lycoperdon perlatum
Bovista is from the Old German bofist that was Latinized. Calvatia is Latin for “a bald object.” Pyriforme means “pear shaped.” Utriformis means “uterine-like.” Plumbea means “leaden.”
Lycoperdon is from the Greek meaning “flatulence of the wolf” or “wolf breaking wind.” Candidum means “white,” while perlatum means “widespread,” or may be from perfero, meaning “to endure.”
Puffballs have long been associated with farting. In England they were known as fistballs or bullfists. Theophrastus of ancient Greece called it pezis and the Roman Pliny a similar pezicae.
In ancient Rome it was crepitus lupi; in Spain, cuesco de lobo; and in France, pet de loup, meaning “fart of the wolf,” suggesting the silent but deadly type of wind.
Other names include puckfist, which means “fairy fart,” from the Gaelic puca, or the Welsh pwca, meaning “an elf,” or “demon or hobgoblin.” Puck is a well-known fairy, and the Irish call him pooka. He is about at night, causing mischief, sometimes taking the form of a horse and attacking travelers on the road.
Puffballs are commonly found throughout North America. Many years ago, I found a giant western puffball larger than a beach ball. Some are up to five feet across, weigh fifty pounds, and may contain up to seven trillion spores, about three to five microns in size.
The largest recorded giant puffball was found in New York State in 1877 and measured 162.5 centimeters in diameter. From a distance, it was mistaken for a sheep.
In 1987, a specimen of giant puffball measuring more than eight feet across was found in Canada. It was plucked from the ground before it had started to produce spores and weighed more than forty-eight pounds. It was capable of producing more than 1025 spores. That is ten followed by twenty-five zeros!
The average giant puffball, weighing two hundred fifty grams, will still produce seven trillion spores. If each were to germinate and grow to the same size, the combined mass would be approximately eight hundred times the size of the planet Earth.
Smaller puffballs, when ripe, will expel one million spores the moment they are struck by a single raindrop. The small aperture through which the spores escape is known as an ostiole, meaning “little door.”
Bovista fruiting bodies have been found at archeology sites in England, and radiocarbon-dated to before the time of Christ.
When young, they make excellent food. A sliced giant puffball will fill a large frying pan. Jack Czarnecki, in A Cook’s Book of Mushrooms, shares his tip of using nori seaweed with puffball dishes. He was always distracted by the slightly minty flavor, which nori appears to neutralize.
He suggests tamari, sake, rice vinegar, and other Japanese condiments as the best flavors for puffball cooking. I agree, for as Martin Osis, president of the Alberta Mycological Society often says, if you like tofu, you will like puffballs.
Checkered puffball (C. bovista) is known in Malaki as ngoma wa nyani, or “the drum of the baboon,” and is a prized edible.
Amber puffball (L. umbrinum) is found in mixed forests and looks like a smaller brown version of L. perlatum. In Mexico, the amber puffball is known as kapxia, meaning ball, but in other places it is referred to as ju’ba’pbich or “star excrement fungus.” It is a popular edible when young.
L. mixtecorum are mushrooms are considered to be the best quality, whereas L. marginatum is considered second choice and called gi i sa wa.
Small tumbling puffball (L. pusillum) is a prized edible in India, and is known as ghundi, meaning “nipple-shaped” or “button.” To the Santal of India, it is known as rote putka, meaning “toad soul plant,” and to the Kanaks, “thunder turd.” The Buddha is believed to have eaten a piece as a substitute for Soma. It is known as pûtika.
Western lawn puffball (V. pratense) is believed to contain psychoactive substances.
Black puffball is recorded in the University of Saskatchewan database. It was found in 1972 at Skara Brae in Orkney as a well-preserved specimen carbon-dated to 1750 to 2130 years ago. It was probably gathered for stopping bleeding.
Snow white puffball, according to noted mycologist Schalkwijk-Barendsen, may be hallucinogenic. Edible when young, it may be narcotic in later stages of life.
Throughout the ages, these mushrooms have been associated with the planet Jupiter; and related to wisdom and integrity.
The Santal of India believe that small tumbling puffballs are related to thunder and lightning, that they are animate and have a soul.
Various tribes used puffballs as tinder for starting fires, or dried pieces as incense for holy ceremony to drive away evil spirits. Puffballs were called such names as “no-eyes” and “ghost’s makeup.”
Puffballs were worn as magic charms, and even filled with seeds or tiny pebbles for use as rattles.
In northern Mexico, a species of fecal-smelling Lycoperdon (L. marginatum) known as Kalamoto is taken by sorcerers to enable them to approach people without being detected and to make people sick.
Further south, near Oacaxz, the Mixtec use gi i wa (L. mixtecorum) to induce a condition of half sleep, during which voices and echoes can be heard.
The Alberta Cree call them pesohkan, and use the powdery spores on fresh wounds for stopping blood and preventing infection. The soft, dried immature centers are used to remove foreign objects from the eye.
The Blackfoot Nation call them kakatoosi, or “fallen stars.” They are said to be indicators of supernatural events. The Blackfoot traditionally used the center of dried, unripe puffballs for the same purpose as the Cree and, in fact, so did the ancient Greeks. When available, the dried powder was mixed with spider webs for even more effective clotting of blood.
The Blackfoot drank spore infusions to stop internal bleeding and hemorrhage.
The Blood Nation took pieces of the fruiting body, boiled them in water, and mixed them with grease for ringworm or hemorrhoids. Young puffballs were held against the nose to staunch bleeding.
Lycoperdon pyriforme
The Chipewyan, further north, call them datsa’tsie. The spores were sometimes used as a baby powder to prevent diaper rash. The Dene call the puffball wogwichi, and use the dried spores for staunching bleeding of the nose and skin wounds, as well as to treat skin rashes around the neck.
The larger C. cretacea, found in the arctic and subarctic, is known as atungaujait by the Inuit of Baffin Island. The dry spores are used for similar hemostatic and disinfecting properties.
Down East, various Iroquois First Nations called the giant puffball by various descriptors. The Mohawk called it devil’s bread, the Cayuga knew it as smoke shoots out, and the Onondaga called it either smoking fungus or round fungus.
The Arikara natives made a poultice of spore mass and red baneberry root to treat inflamed or abscessed breasts.
Dried, mature puffballs were used as a remedy for earache and broken eardrum.
Native tribes of British Columbia used the powder for diaper rash, and added alumroot (Heuchera spp.) powder if necessary.
The Dakota applied the powder to the cut umbilical cord after childbirth.
Giant puffball is used in Indonesia for swellings. The fungus’ flesh is mixed with vinegar and applied to the affected area. It is, of course, a styptic, and the entire fruiting body is mixed with oil as an embrocation. The flesh is often added to ointments for treating hemorrhoids.
In Finland, dried giant puffballs were traditionally fed to calves suffering chronic diarrhea.
Chinese herbalists gather the reddish-brown giant puffball dust in the fall and mix it with honey to treat throat infections, cough, or inflammation including tonsillitis and laryngitis. In tea form, it is used as a menstrual regulator.
The spores are used externally as a reliable hemostat, stopping bleeding effectively, and were used by European surgeons for centuries for the exact same purpose. Topically, a decoction or tincture is used as a mouthwash or gargle for sore throats, and bleeding lips and gums. Whitla remarked that the dried immature flesh is “a soft and comfortable surgical dressing.”
Infusions or powder form are useful in the treatment of hemorrhoids, varicose veins, and frostbite.
The related L. pusillum showed activity against Botrytis cinerea and Verticillium dahliae.
Giant puffball tincture has long been used in various nervous affections.
Dried puffball tea is used to treat tonsillitis and swollen, sore throats.
Lead colored puffball (Bovista plumbea) is used in traditional Chinese medicine for external application to stop bleeding and swelling. It is used internally to relieve internal heat and fever and as a gargle to cure chronic tonsillitis, as well as sore throat and hoarse voice.
When used externally, it stops bleeding, including nosebleeds, and cures skin ulcers and watery chilblains (acral ulcers, or ulcers affecting the extremities).
Snow white puffball spores were traditionally used to stop nosebleeds.
C. gigantea: burned ash contains about 72 percent sodium phosphate, 16 percent aluminum, 3 percent magnesium, and 0.44 percent organic silicic acid. Gold, in amounts around 160 nanograms per g(-1), has been found in puff balls in unpolluted areas.
The spores contain amino acids, urea, ergosterol, calvacin, gemmatein, polysaccharides, and lipids. The amino acid content is very high, with noteworthy levels of lysine, tyrosine, asparagine, and glutamine.
C. cyathiformis: polyhydroxysteroids similar to ecdysteroids, as well as calvasterone, ergosta-4,7,22-trien-3,6-dione; cyathisterone, cyathisterol, ergosta-4,6,8(14),22-tetraen-3-one, and calvasterols A and B.
L. perlatum: lycoperdic acid, zinc, copper, lead, and iron.
Giant puffball (L. giganteum) shows activity against Microsporum boulardii as well as Candida albicans and various Aspergillus species (Jonathan et al. 2003).
Lycoperdon species are high in iron and manganese (Colak et al. 2009).
Checkered puffball (C. bovista/caelata) has been analyzed and found to contain the protein calcaelin, which has shown antimitogenic activity toward mouse splenocytes and reduced the viability of breast cancer cells (Ng et al. 2003).
Earlier work identified a peptide that potently inhibited proliferation of spleen cells with an IC50 of about 100 nanomoles. The viability of breast cancer cells was reduced to half.
Mosaic puffball shows inhibition of a number of bacteria, including Bacillus subtilis, E. coli, Klebsiella pneumonia, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Salmonella typhimurium, Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus pyogenes, and Mycobacterium smegmatis. A 60 percent methanol extract shows inhibition similar to the antibiotic gentamycin (Dulger 2005).
Studies at the University of Oklahoma have shown giant puffball to possess antitumor properties. Calvacin inhibits the growth of sarcoma 180 in mice. The spores are active, in vitro, against a variety of bacteria including Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus pneumonia, Proteus, and Pseudomonas species. Cancer researchers studied calvacin derived from giant puffball and found that it inhibited sarcoma 180, mammary adenocarcinoma 755, leukemia L-1210, and HeLa cancer cell lines (Lucas et al. 1957).
Giant puffball spores stopped traumatic hemorrhage after operations in nearly 98 percent of 467 patients who were studied in China.
Some molecular weight derivatives from C. gigantea are reported effective against poliomyelitis and influenza viruses, according to Cochran in his interesting book The Biology and Cultivation of Edible Mushrooms.
Pear shaped puffball (L. pyriforme) has been shown to possess anti-carcinogenic effect with a 100 percent inhibition rate against both sarcoma 180 and Ehrlich carcinoma. According to Adrian Morgan, it is also reported to have sleep-inducing effects.
Snow white puffball has been shown to possess antifungal activity against Candida albicans, C. tropicalis, and Aspergillus fumigatus, as well as Alternaria solani, Botrytis cinerea, and Verticillium dahliae.
According to traditional Chinese medicine, C. candida is good for the throat, relieving heat and fever. The mature spores are styptic.
Warted puffball occurs worldwide, growing in open fields of the woods. It is edible and tasty. The dried sporophores are effective for detumescence, staunching bleeding, and detoxification. In India, it is sold in the markets to “expel cold and bilious humors.” Care must to taken, though, as mercury levels as high as 2.94 milligrams per kilogram have been found in specimens.
Calvasterone is a dimeric steroid common to C. cyathiformis.
Mycelial culture of a unnamed Bovista species (96042) yielded several cytotoxic compounds including illudane psathyrellon B (illudane C3) and protoilludane armillol, 5-desoxyilludosin and 13-hydroxy-5-desoxyilludosin, several new secoprotoilludanes, illudane compound 8 and drimene-2—11-diol, and a novel hexacyclic compound bovistol (Rasser et al. 2002).
Coetzee and van Wyk (2009) have published a good summary of Calvatia ethnomycology and biotechnology.
Giant puffball (Bovista gigantea) has a marked effect on the skin, soothing skin rashes brought on by excitement and made worse by bathing. Moist eczema on back of the hands is a symptom of use.
In cases of chronic uticaria, it follows well after Rhus tox, or poison ivy. It is a specific for those suffering from stammering or stuttering.
It is used to treat hemorrhage, cardiac circulatory insufficiency accompanied by hyperemia, anoxemia, gastric pain, and diarrhea.
In female patients, it relieves the diarrhea that comes before or during menses. The menstruation may be heavier at night, or there may be some between-period bleeding.
It may be useful for treating protracted colds with ulcerated nose and lips.
Neuritis, or nerve pain, numbness, and tingling are all improved with puffball. The head may feel enlarged, and there may be an awkwardness or clumsiness with mechanical ability and the hands.
One symptom that may lead one to thinking of this remedy is a toothache ameliorated by fresh air.
Hering suggests that it is an antidote to the ill effects of tar applied externally. Coal tar derivatives are everywhere, including in petroleum jelly and aspirin. This remedy may relieve asthma caused by coal tar ointments used to treat skin eruptions.
Dose: 3C to 6C. The mother tincture is made from the spores of the ripe fungus.
Frans Vermeulen, in his excellent book Fungi, suggests that Bovista ash is rich in aluminum, and that homeopathic Bovista and Alumina have nearly one thousand symptoms in common.
Puffball spore essence is helpful for those with speech difficulties. The range of helpfulness is from those suffering stage fright at the thought of performing or having to give a speech to those suffering from chronic or early childhood stuttering.
The essence is much more effective if taken frequently and while the symptoms are manifesting.
—PRAIRIE DEVA
Lycoperdon perlatum essence is used when love is the encapsulation of mind. Play the magic wand and illusions disappear.
—SILVERCORD
Puffball essence is used to help gain insight, perception, and greater awareness. It is for those who hold onto the past. For sore throats, fever, bronchi, and lungs. It has a cleansing and detoxifying action.
—SILVERCORD
Puffball (L. perlatum) essence has a direct effect on the fontanel, opening up the crown chakra and connecting us to higher dimensions. It helps us be aware of the relative importance of different circumstances during difficult times so that we stay focused and centered.
—KORTE PHI
Calvatia booniana; note the billions of spores present
Powder: use one to two grams in honey as needed. The dust is extremely irritating and should be collected wearing a mask over the mouth.
Infusion: two to six grams of dried, immature puffballs in tea. Steep and drink as needed.
Decoction: Hobbs suggests wrapping the dried fruiting body in cheesecloth and decocting for twenty to thirty minutes. Great idea.
Tincture: Five to ten drops as needed. The dried puffball is cut into small pieces and saturated in a 70 percent alcohol solution. Use one part mushroom to five parts solution and soak for two weeks before straining and bottling.
When I raised bees years ago, I used to smolder previously dried puffballs for stupefying the bees during hive inspection or when removing honey. Probably any smoke would do, but I was interested to find out that people in Kenya sold puffballs in the market for the same purpose. The fumes from burning common puffball are narcotic and anesthetic, the gas given off being a derivative of carbonic oxide, or simply carbon dioxide. Smoldering Piptoporus betulinus or Daedalea quercina will work just as well.
The spores of giant puffball and Lycopodium, a clubmoss, were often combined for stage lighting, or to invoke a dramatic flash by blowing it through a flame, in the case of a shamanic ceremony.
Cantharellus cibarius
(GOLDEN CHANTERELLE)
(GIROLLE)
C. minor
(SMALL CHANTERELLE)
C. tubaeformis
C. infundibuliformis
Craterellus tubaeformis
C. neotubaeformis
Helvella tubaeformis
(TRUMPET CHANTERELLE)
(WINTER CHANTERELLE)
(TUBED CHANTERELLE)
(YELLOW LEGS)
C. cinnabarinus
(RED CHANTERELLE)
C. formosus
(PACIFIC GOLDEN CHANTERELLE)
I picked a basket of chanterelles
Avoided the destroying angels
The ink caps and puffballs
Gorged all summer on what hadn’t made it
through.
“Mushroom,” we whispered to each other
As if the name would kill us.
—SHANE RHODES
The boys referred to the “vixens” [Lithuanian for Cantharelle], emblems of maidenhood, uneaten by worms, no insect lights upon their forms.
—PAN TADEUSZ
Cibarius is Latin meaning “good to eat.” Chanterelle is from the Greek kantharos for “vase,” due to their shape, formosa for “finely formed” or “beautiful.” Chanterelles symbolize abundance and happiness in the world of mushrooms!
In Russia, the mushroom is called lisichki or “little fox.”
The Thompson First Nation in British Columbia refer to the golden chanterelle as “little fish-gills.” They are often eaten fresh along with salmon and other fish. They were traditionally hung and dried for later use in soup and stews. When plentiful, the mushrooms were roasted over a fire on sticks like marshmallows.
More than two million kilograms are shipped annually in barrels of brine to Germany. Chanterelle is known as pfifferlinge there and is highly prized.
Golden chanterelle is orange-yellow and firm overall, with a mild to spicy taste and slight apricot smell. It is scattered amongst reindeer moss (lichen) under jack pine. Very edible and prized by restaurants for serving fresh as well as for canning and drying. The annual harvest in North America is estimated to be worth two billion U.S. dollars.
This is not surprising, as in the Haute Savoie region of France, picking is limited to half a kilogram (just over one pound) per person and one kilogram per vehicle. Washington State has some picking restrictions and without adequate protection, these will soon apply elsewhere. It is very important to avoid damaging mycelium, which take years to recover.
My cousin, Gary Eisnor, often sends me a parcel of C. lateritius from near Chester, Nova Scotia. They are smaller and more delicate than those from the Pacific Northwest, with a smoother underside and less distinct gills.
Cantharellus formosus
The Pacific golden chanterelle is C. formosus. In 1999, it was named the official state mushroom of Oregon.
During a foray to Sicamous in September 2008, which involved picking numerous lobster and honey mushrooms, I also enjoyed a meal of white chanterelles (C. subalbidus). These are a choice edible.
Woolly chanterelle (Gomphus floccosus) was found in abundance, but is not recommended. Several novice pickers staying in our motel cooked and ate it, mistaking it for an edible chanterelle. It has a sour taste and causes nausea and diarrhea in some individuals. It contains nor-caperoic acid that has been shown to enlarge rat livers. The rookies felt fine the next morning.
Small or lesser chanterelle (C. minor) is also known as rooster mushrooms and is identified by a pink spore print.
Trumpet chanterelle is often found on damp soil from July through September. It is fond of moss and rotten wood, in both solitary and gregarious concentrations. They tend to be waterlogged and quickly lose their shape. Jack Czarnecki calls it “chop suey chanterelle,” due to its mushy texture and indistinct flavor. I like them, especially in omelets.
Some consider this a superior culinary mushroom compared to other chanterelles. It forms mycorrhizal relationships with orchids.
Chanterelles have a woodsy, apricot-like scent that is enhanced with dried apricots during cooking. According to expert chef Jack Czarnecki, it is one of the few mushrooms that can be paired with lemon without losing its character. He says that chanterelles are “more like the queen seductress; fruity, peppery, richer, and more difficult to work with from a cooking standpoint, and complex and very singular.” Well said.
He pairs them with game or shellfish, or pickles them for later use in salads. A good German white wine like a Riesling is the perfect accompaniment.
The dried mushroom yields very little flavor, but when soaked in vodka for a month, an interesting flavor for sauces develops. Canning is perhaps a better preservation method than freezing, as the raw mushrooms tend to turn mushy when thawed.
I like to fry them gently in butter and then freeze the whole mixture.
According to David Spahr, adding dry powdered chanterelles to Alfredo or béchamel-based sauces is outstanding. He adds that it is not the right mushroom to serve with steak, and I have to agree it is a waste.
In 1997, the first successful inoculation of C. cibarius of sixteen-month-old pine seedlings was reported from Sweden.
In traditional Chinese medicine, it is prescribed frequently to prevent night blindness and inflammation of the eyes. It also helps to tonify the mucus membranes and may help increase resistance to a variety of infectious respiratory diseases.
In Latvia, a tincture of the fresh or dried fruiting body is used for tonsillitis, furuncles, and abscesses, as well as to delay the growth of tubercular bacillus and promote removal of radioactivity from the body. They are believed to help remove intestinal worms when consumed in large amounts.
Small or lesser chanterelle (C. minor) is similar to golden chanterelle in medicinal action. It helps clear the eyes and is beneficial to the liver, intestines, and stomach. It is also used for the treatment of diseases with Vitamin A deficiency such as dry skin, softening cornea, night blindness, and xerophthalmia.
C. cibarius: eight essential amino acids, 21 percent protein, vitamin A and D2, cibaric acid and 10 hydroxy-8-decenoic acid (two fatty acids with weak antimicrobial and cytotoxic activity), potassium (507 milligrams per hundred grams), chromium (four micrograms per hundred grams), iron (one milligram per hundred grams), six phenolic compounds (3-, 4- and 5-0-caffeoylquinic acid), caffeic, p-coumaric, citric, ascorbic, malic shikimic tartaric and fumaric acid, hydroxytyrosol, tyrosol, luteolin, apigenin, and very small amounts of amanitine.
Chanterelles contain significant amounts of ergocalciferol, or D2, which regulates calcium transport in humans. It is a rodenticide as it causes accumulation of calcium in mammals, birds, and fish. The presence of D2 in large amounts may explain why insects, slugs, and snails rarely attack this mushroom.
A combination of Ganoderma, Trametes, and Cantharellus species, as well as Schizophyllum commune, Phellinus igniarius, and Fomes fomentarius are mixed together in Tanzania to treat HIV, Kaposi’s sarcoma, and other health concerns. The combination is known as gacoca
(Sumba 2005).
The mushroom accumulates radioactive cesium by double, and to a lesser extent, is found in its smaller cousin (C. minor) below.
Jeong Ah Kim et al. (2008) identified ergosterol, ergosterol peroxide, and cerevisterol in C. cibarius. They also found the mushroom contains potent inhibitors of NFkappaB activation, a finding that requires more intense study.
Yagi et al. (2000) found a human blood type A hemagglutinate.
Extracts of the sporophores show inhibition of certain species of bacteria (Robbins et al. 1945).
Outila et al. (1999) conducted a human bioassay on the bioavailability of vitamin D in this species and others.
The related C. xanthopus (C. lutescens) exhibits 36 percent thrombin inhibitor activity (Doljak et al. 2001).
Chanterelle essence invites one to drink from my endless well of knowledge that I can transmute your dreams into reality. It is used for skin problems and will tone up mucus membranes, eyes, and bronchi.
—SILVERCORD
Canthaxanthin, a carotenoid from the red cap, is used as a color additive in suntanning agents. It is present in various marine crustaceans and believed to give pink flamingos their beautiful coloration.
Catathelasma imperialis
C. imperiale
(IMPERIAL MUSHROOM)
C. ventricosa
(SWOLLEN STALKED CAT)
Several years ago, a member of our Mycological Society returned from a camping trip to the Rocky Mountains with a humongous fungus that was later identified as the imperial mushroom. It is known as potato mushroom in Alaska, due to its firm flesh.
A smaller relative, C. ventricosa also grows under spruce and fir in the same region, so it may have been this species. It has a paler cap and is sometimes mistaken for the pine matsutake, but has a mild cucumber scent and no cinnamon odor. Both are firm and edible. It is known in Japan as momitake, or “mock matsutake.”
The latter fungus contains three glycosphingolipids with a cis-?17-fatty acyl moiety, specifically catacerebrosides A-C (Zhan and Yue 2003).
These compounds are not well studied, but cerebrosides in general are nerve cell membrane activators, and play a role in antitumor and immune stimulation.
The polysaccharides from the mycelium have been found to inhibit both sarcoma 180 and Ehrlich carcinoma cancer cell lines by 90 percent.
Catathelasma ventricosa
Ceratocystis populina
C. fimbriata
Ceratocystis populina is an ascomycete that grows on the Aspen poplar. It is a blue-staining fungus that causes cankers in poplar species.
When steam distilled, it produces a pleasant fruit-like essential oil that includes various fruit esters, acyclic mono- and sesquiterpenes, terpenoids, and 2-phenyl-ethyl acetate.
Stefer et al. (2003) found a mixture of esters and alcohols produced by the fungus that can be defined as natural.
The related C. piceae, found on pine and other conifers, contains 6-protoilludene as the major volatile metabolite. It is related to C. ulmi, the dimorphic fungus implicated in Dutch elm disease.
This common yet easy to miss fungus contains novel enzymes that help break down wood chip lignins prior to mechanical application, resulting in energy savings of 30 to 40 percent.
Yaghoubi et al. (2008) found fungal enzymes reduce wheat and barley biomass by 21 percent and 19 percent respectively.
Akin et al. (1993) found the mushroom helps improve in vitro digestion and volatile fatty acid production by ruminal organisms by 80 percent. This suggests application for feedlot and beef producers.
It is a good biological devulcanizer of rubber (Sato, S. et al. 2004).
Cerrena unicolor
Coriolus unicolor
Polystictus unicolor
Daedalea unicolor
Trametes unicolor
(GRAY POLYPORE)
(MOSSY MAZE POLYPORE)
Cerrena is Greek meaning “like a shield” and unicolor from the Latin meaning “of one color,” in this case gray.
This is a widespread and cosmopolitan mushroom, living as a wound parasite on deciduous trees like poplar. It grows along the grooves of the bark on horizontal logs, but on standing trees takes the form of one large gray, brown-edged fungus covered with green algae.
Research shows that the mushroom has an affinity for fibrin and has a direct and stable influence on new thrombosis. More research would be welcomed, as it is plentiful.
It contains anti-carcinogenic substances that inhibit Ehrlich carcinoma in mice studies (Shibata, K. et al. 1969).
Early work by Hervey, found activity against Staphylococcus aureus (Hervey 1947).
Cerrena unicolor, covered with green algae
Michniewicz et al. (2005) found laccase levels as high as 22 percent obtained with the fungus grown in tomato juice. Two isoforms were produced and remained stable at pH 7 and 10, with optimal performance at sixty degrees Celsius. These laccases are composed of glycoproteins including mannose, galactose, and N-acetylglucosamine.
Gray polypore on wheat bran substrate produces high levels of manganese peroxidase (6.3 international units per liter) by day eleven. Ethanol production wastes also provided high laccase levels. At a pH of 5.5, laccase appeared on the second day and peaked on the eleventh day at 233 international units per liter (Rebhun et al. 2005).
Cellobiose, instead of avicel as a carbon source, results in a twenty-fold increase in laccase activity.
Wheat straw is useful for the hemagglutinating activity accumulation by this mushroom (Davitashvili et al. 2008).
High laccase levels were identified in Cerrena species by Elisashvili et al. (2002b).
The related C. maxima, also an active laccase producer, consumed up to 50 percent atrazine in a five-day cultivation, and 80 to 90 percent in forty days.
Chlorophyllum molybdites
Lepiota morgani
L. molybdites
C. rachodes var. hortensis
(GREEN SPORED PARASOL)
C. rachodes
Lepiota rachodes
Macrolepiota rachodes
Leucoagaricus rachodes
(SHAGGY PARASOL)
Rachodes is Greek meaning “ragged or tattered garment.” This handsome mushroom is common to the western side of North America and is often found growing on lawns.
Green spored parasol is responsible for more poisonings than any other mushroom in North America.
In Fresno County, California, nineteen cases of mushroom poisoning were reported by local hospitals in one seventeen-day period, all caused by this specific mushroom. It resembles edible mushrooms like the shaggy mane or shaggy parasol, forming fairy rings on lawns.
