Los Gatos Weekly-Times

The lethal "death's cap" can be a dead ringer for the harmless field mushroom pictured here.

Mushroom Safari

Story and photographs by
Mark Sunlin

Mushrooms have spawned much folklore over the years thanks to their mysterious properties.

They don't look like other plants, for openers, lacking both leaves and the soothing, familiar green hue of chlorophyll. And they sprout up overnight with a suddenness once attributed to the magical green thumbs of elves, "whose pastime is to make midnight mushrooms," as Shakespeare observed.

Often poisonous, sometimes glowing in the dark, mushrooms represent, as Rod Serling would say, "The middle ground between light and shadow; between science and superstition; between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge." If TV's Twilight Zone had a plant as a logo, it would be a mushroom.

The Santa Cruz Mountains, with their seasonally moist, shaded forests reminiscent of Germany's Black Forest, is just the place for a mushroom safari.

The most striking and famous of local mushrooms is the red-capped, white-speckled "fly agaric" of Fantasia fame. Looking like a cross between a mushroom and a strawberry, the gaudy fly agaric is also somewhat poisonous. (Its name stems from a former usage as a fly-killing insecticide.)

Modern folklore tells of Vikings eating this toadstool to gain their berserk fighting frenzy when out pillaging Saxon villages a thousand years ago. But mycologists now doubt this, pointing out that the coma-like sleep induced by the fly-agaric following its initial stimulation hardly made one fit for battle.

The bright colors of the poisonous fly-agaric serve as a "hands off!" signal to plant-eating animals, exploiting their mistrust of the bizarre in the manner of the bright warning colors of poisonous coral snakes. Ecologists term this trait "aposematism." Once upon a time, elves and witches got the blame, more picturesquely, for the poison, and this spirit-association likewise served as a hands off warning.

Native to North America as well as to Europe, the fly agaric pictured here was found growing under Australian eucalyptus trees near Los Gatos's Lexington Reservoir.

In local redwood forests, I often come upon the blackened, ash-like remains of another mushroom that appeared to have been mysteriously burnt to a crisp while the surrounding forest floor was left unsinged. Before discovering the cause, this was quite puzzling. As it turns out, this was all that was left of the "inky-cap" mushroom--an ordinary-looking mushroom until it decomposes and leaves this seemingly incinerated, ghostly image of its former self.

Much more insidious is the "death's cap" mushroom. Also ordinary-looking (it resembles a white field-mushroom, but with a ringed stem), it is lethal. There is no antidote for this fungus, and last year several Bay Area Asian immigrants reportedly died after having eaten some.

A Contra Costra family recently paid the price for mistaking death's caps for edible mushrooms. All those who ate the mushrooms became very ill and a 14-year-old had to have a liver transplant to survive the deadly fungus, which also goes by such names as "deadly amanita" and "destroying angel."

"Witch's butter," a mushroom-like fungus, despite its sinister-sounding name, is not so threatening. Also known more benignly as "fairy butter" this yellow, gelatinous fungus, which indeed looks like a botanical butter or Jell-O, grows on fallen tree-limbs, especially oaks, following rains, and is very common at such times in the oak woods of Lexington Reservoir.

The "sulfur polypore" is the closest we are likely to come locally to a phosphorescent fungus, yet while the "sulfur mushroom," as it is also called, with its radiant, golden color and consisting of numerous saucer-size gills growing from a tree stump, is dazzling by daylight.

"Fairy rings" are amongst the most unusual of mushroom traits--which is saying a lot. These corral-like formations of dozens of mushrooms look like a miniature, botanical Stonehenge. The striking, seemingly attended appearance of a fairy-ring (as the phenomenon is still called) led to the centuries-long belief that these growths sprouted where such spirits had danced at night.

In 1911, following graduation from Stanford University, folklorist W.Y. Evans-Wentz found such beliefs still existing in Scotland, but vanishing. One Highland minister told the visiting Californian that "when I was a boy a woman pulled me from a fairy-ring to save me from being taken, for it was widely believed that stepping into one of these weird formations would cause one to become lost in time, Rip Van Winkle style." Shakespeare likewise remarked on sheep refusing to graze within these mystic rings.

Like the fly agaric's vivid colors, mushroom folklore once alerted people to the potential danger of mushrooms, for anything associated with the spirit world was best left alone. In some cases, such as with fairy-rings, this was unnecessary (sheep actually do not avoid them).

But with the potential treachery of toadstools, it is better to err to the side of caution when on mushroom safaris: the safest place to pick eating-mushrooms is the supermarket.