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.