Amanita muscaria

The Mario mushroom, the mushroom of fairy tales, the most famous mushroom, a gateway mushroom, really, as it was likely the first depiction of fungi you ever saw. From worlds of 8-bit, fantasy, tribes, and pine forests, let us welcome the infamous... Amanita muscaria.

Credit Stu's Images CC BY-SA 3.0

Amanita muscaria is a species complex, meaning that this name refers to a closely related group of subspecies and varieties. You will see versions of this mushroom from different continents and that range from bright yellow to the stereotypical red, but still bearing the A. muscaria name.

They are mycorrhizal with many tree species- commonly with pines, but also birch, Southern Beech (in Australia and neighboring regions), and even eucalypts in Portugal! In my photos below, they are featured cuddling up to White Pines, and later they will be seen with Paper Birch.

Here's a little evolution thought experiment for you: A 2006 molecular phylogenetic study (comparing DNA sequences to trace lineage) of multiple regional populations of A. muscaria found that they essentially fell into 3 distinct clades (genetic groups)- Eurasian (essentially, Russia), Eurasian subalpine (adapted to a certain zone of elevation), and North American. Using your geography skills, where do you think they found all three? The common starting point it evolved outwards from? You'll find out soon enough ;)

The whimsical tale of Amanita muscaria, like all great stories, involves a trip through the gastrointestinal tract. This mushroom has plausibly been used as an entheogen by Siberians, Hindus, and others over time. People would drink the urine of a mushroom-stuffed deer or a shaman because they believed the liver would filter out poisonous parts. As it turns out, heat (and not urination) is the best way to make this Amanita safer for consumption. Another legend holds that around winter solstice, shamans would dress in a suit of red and white in likeness of the mushroom, take a big bag to go collect them, and then hang them over the fireplace to dry. Perhaps he'd then distribute them via chimney to people he believed to be open-hearted to receiving such magic. Add a hallucinogenic component into that story and it sounds like a hit cultural phenomenon to me.

Chemistry has the most fun when it flirts with danger; the neurotoxic compound ibotenic acid is the very precursor to the benevolently psychoactive compound muscimol.

If you're wondering "man.. how does it even do all that in your brain?!" it's really just because they are structurally similar to the neurotransmitters we already use, GABA and Glutamic Acid. You call in a wave of these stunt doubles and your neurons get excited, it's pretty neat.

If you've got a gold or beige-colored A. muscaria on your hands, it's likely Amanita muscaria var. guessowii. If it's more yellow, you might have found the lovely Yellow Patches, Amanita flavonica. 
I love Fly Agarics and their shameless grandeur. They're head-turners that's for sure, so I rejoice for every person that finds their way into the world of mushrooms either by playing Super Mario or drinking a reindeer's urine or looking at a tree and the bright little buddy next to it.

P.S. It's Alaska! A place between Eurasia and N. America. So it's hypothesized that it originated there, and radiated east, down the Americas and west throughout Eurasia. How it got to Australia? One can only imagine the wild ways anything gets to Australia.

Leccinum snelli

Time to give some love to the Boletes! Trade out your gills for pores and give it up for Leccinum snelli OR Leccinum variicolor!

Collection Data: Northeastern North America, mixed forest including birch species, hemlock, beech, pines. Close to riverfront, wet, acidic soil. Late summer. Growing singly, terrestrially.

It is characteristic of boletes to have specific mycorrhizal tree partners which can inform you on where to find them. In summer, I quickly discovered that birch and aspen in the forests around me sported bolete friends from the Boletus and Leccinum genera. This bolete, like some others, bruises blue; but as you can see, I was startled to find that a few minutes after I had broken the young specimen's stem, it looked as though it were bleeding. This two-color bruising was highly unusual for what I knew of Bolete color changing at the time. I have since returned and edited this post because I had previously identified this as Leccinum scabrum- but after I had a more seasoned ID expert from NAMA (North American Mycological Association) give it a closer look, I was informed this is L. snelli. After my own digging, I found out that this species is almost indistinguishable from another species that also exists in the Northeast, Leccinum variicolor- microscopic inspection of the cap surface (the pileipellis) is needed to tell them apart. Both these species bruise pink/red higher up on the stem and bruise blue/green lower down. The colorful molecule in question, variegatic acid, is capable of being converted to forms that account for both the red and blue I observed. A great thanks to Tom Volk for elucidating this information for me!

In the presence of oxygen, variegatic acid undergoes an oxidation reaction that produces the quinone methide, responsible for the blueing. Another closely related form, apparently also a result of oxidation, is variegatorubin, responsible for the red color. 

The boletes are an incredible lesson in using bruising as an identification aid, and it was definitely a bucket list item of mine. Happy hunting!