View A43-1112-1979-eng.pdf

INTRODUCTION
Mushrooms appeal to different people in different ways. The biologist is
attracted by the variety of species, their place in the economy of nature and
their interrelations with other plants and animals; the artist or photographer
delights in their infinite variety of form and color; the medical research worker
may look to them hopefully as a possible source of new drugs; but to most
people the quality that first arouses interest in them is their use as food. In
Roman times edible mushrooms were renowned as a delicacy and today in
some parts of the world they constitute an important part of the food supply
of the people.
One of the questions often asked a mycologist is "How do you tell an
edible mushroom from a poisonous one?" It would seem that the questioner
expects some simple test or rule of thumb by which an instantaneous diagnosis
can be made. It is curious that this attitude toward mushrooms should exist
because it is not manifested toward other plants. People rarely ask how to tell
an edible berry from a poisonous one nor do they expect to be given a simple
test to distinguish between edible and poisonous leaves.
Although several reasons for this attitude might be suggested, perhaps
one may be connected with the comparatively late development of precise
knowledge of the structure and life history of mushrooms and other fungi. For
a long time even botanists did not look upon the fungi as plants in themselves
but regarded them as a sort of excrescence on decaying vegetable matter. Their
apparently sudden appearance and disappearance often late in the season
without visible seeds or means of reproduction, their frequent association with
decaying organic matter, their vivid colors, fantastic shapes, and in some in-
stances their poisonous properties, caused them to be regarded as objects of
mystery and sometimes even to be associated with the supernatural.
One common superstition concerned the fairy rings, those dark green
circles in the grass where mushrooms appear. We now know that these are
caused by the circular growth outward of the fungus in the soil, but they were
once believed to mark the spot where the fairies held their midnight revels.
Another well-known example of magical power attributed to a fungus
occurs in Alice in Wonderland where a bite of one side of a certain mushroom
would make you grow taller and a bite of the other side would make you grow
shorter, so that by a httle judicious nibbhng it was possible to adjust oneself to
any desired dimension.
Mycologists take a more reahstic and less fanciful view of the mushrooms
but to most people these are still a very unfamiliar and somewhat mysterious
group of organisms, and perhaps it is because of this background of mystery
that some magical test is expected to distinguish good mushrooms from bad.
Actually there is only one test to find out whether a mushroom or any
other plant is poisonous and that is to eat it. If it makes you sick or kills you it
is poisonous, and it is mainly through such human experience that we have
built up our knowledge of which plants are edible and which poisonous.
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