A pair of Fly Agaric mushrooms (Amanita muscaria) under a red oak tree, Richmond, BC (photo by Nina Munteanu)

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It was at Stirs Coffee when I first met Dale, a Ladner local, and we got to talking, that I got my very first sighting of a Fly Agaric (Amanita muscaria) mushroom. At the café, after introductions, she mentioned that she’d seen a mushroom close to where she lives in Ladner and showed me a photo on her phone. There it was! Right in Ladner. The iconic Amanita! I immediately suggested that she, her dog Robbie, and I pile into my car and she could show me her spotted mushroom. There, looking forlorn among its destroyed neighbours sat a lone Amanita by a fence to a small housing complex by the river. It was days after her sighting and it was in rough shape. The one Dale had photographed was no longer there; someone had decapitated it.

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*Dale and Robbie stand by several mature *Amanitas under a red oak tree (photo by NIna Munteanu)

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I put the location into my memory for next mushroom season and left, a little disappointed.

Then, a week after, I hit the motherlode after visiting a café in east Richmond. I’d determined the Blue Duck Café as my target after a drive in the country and along River Road by the south arm of the Fraser River. The café was in a small mall where I parked, beside a narrow boulevard that divided the parking lot from the sidewalk. I went inside, looking for a treat, ordered a London Fog, and left with my prize.

It was as I left the café that I saw them—hundreds of them! Well, close to a hundred, strewn along the boulevard rich with woodchips and fertile soil under a grove of red oak trees. The mushrooms were in all stages of growth: some had recently thrust up from the fertile ground, round and the size of a golf ball with bright red caps and bright yellow-white ‘warts’; older ones with shiny flat but still convex caps, dripping in the morning rain; then older ones still, larger than my hand, plate-like, yellowing and cracking at their edges.

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*Various growth stages of *Amanita muscaria fruiting bodies:top, young round, several still with their universal veil over gills; middle, mature convex fungi with veil now only a skirt on the stipe; bottom, older fungi with flat, plate-like caps (photos by Nina Munteanu)

*Older *Amanita muscaria develop plate-like caps (photos by Nina Munteanu)

Flat, plate-like older Amanita muscaria with cracking and loss of red pigment and yellowing on edges of cap, BC (photos by Nina Munteanu)

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I just stood there, taking in this colourful profusion. And thought of the irony…

While in Ontario I once spotted the Fly Agaric’s cousin, the American Yellow Fly Agaric (Amanita muscaria var.guessowii) in a mixed forest by a lake and photographed it, growing on the ground among Largetooth Aspens and Oaks. Stunning and beautiful, it was the closest thing I’d come to witnessing an Amanita up close. And no sign of the colourful red and white Fly Agaric of my childhood dreams that had eluded me so far. Not that I didn’t look…

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American Yellow Fly Agaric (Amanita muscaria var. guessowii) in an Ontario forest (photo by Nina Munteanu)

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I’d visited many forest ecosystems, from Canada’s coast to coast: from hemlock old-growth to riparian cedar forests and old-growth deciduous maple-beech forests. Now on the west coast, I walk through western Douglas fir rainforests, giant trees dripping with moss and lichen.

Ironically, it was in a mini-mall on the verge of city with country that I saw a profusion of the incredible mushroom I’d sought pretty much all my life—well, since watching Fantasia as a child.

A pair of mature Amanita muscaria by an oak tree, showing remnant veil ‘skirt’ on stipe and distinctive red cap with yellow-white ‘warts’ (remnant veil), BC (photos by Nina Munteanu)

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The Fly Agaric* (Amanita muscaria)* is a large, white-gilled mushroom with distinct red cap covered in large white ‘warts’—remnants of its universal veil, a membrane that encloses the entire mushroom when it first emerges. One of the world’s most recognizable fungus—thanks in part to literary and art depictions—Amanita muscaria is a cosmopolitan native to conifer and deciduous forests of temperate and boreal regions in the Northern Hemisphere. It is an ectomycorrhizal mushroom, forming symbiotic relationships with many trees including oak, spruce, fir, birch, pine and cedar. Given its symbiotic relationships with various trees, A. muscaria often forms ‘fairy rings’. These toadstools typically emerge in late summer through late autumn, preferring a forest soil: acidic, well-drained nutrient-rich soils (rich in organic matter) together with peat moss, sandy loam, and forest debris or duff, where this fungus forms a symbiotic relationship with trees and shrubs.

The Fly Agaric gets its name from the practice of using it as an insecticide in Germanic and Slavic-speaking parts of Europe (e.g., France, particularly the Vosges region, Romania, Sweden, Slovena, Germany, and England). The cap was broken up and sprinkled into saucers of milk. The ibotenic acid and muscimol attracts and intoxicates flies; they die, drunk.

Contrary to what most think,* Amanita muscaria, *while poisonous, is not usually deadly; fatal poisoning is extremely rare, A. muscaria may cause intoxication, agitation and confusion, gastrointestinal distress, confusion and delirium due to its psychoactive compounds such as muscimol and ibotenic acid. Fatalities are rare, but may occur. Seizures and coma have been reported in severe poisonings.

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*Frying up some detoxified *Amanita muscaria (image by Forager Chef)

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The mushroom is not considered poisonous to touch. The toxins are not absorbed through the skin; the mushroom must be ingested for its toxins to act. Given that the active toxins are water-soluble, boiling several times and discarding the cooking water can partly detoxify the mushroom and some suggest it is edible at this point with a mild, earthy flavour and firm chewy texture. It has also been described as savory, nutty or potato-ish. You can watch this video by Forager Chef for its preparation. Fascinated by Fungi discusses other uses of this mushroom.

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The mushroom dance in Fantasia (image by Disney)

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Besides Disney’s Fantasia, Amanita muscaria has appeared frequently in art and literature, becoming iconic in fairy tales and children’s books. In Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, it figured in as an influence of altered perception. In 1968, R. Gordon Wasson suggested that A. muscaria is the “soma” discussed in the Rigveda of India; it reminds me of Aldous Huxley’s “soma” from his 1932 dystopian science fiction novel Brave New World. In Brave New World, soma is a rather somnambulant opiate-like drug which provided instant calm and contentment to the population.

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Mature Amanita muscaria *by a red oak tree, showing flat plate-like red cap with whitish ‘warts’ and remnant veil ‘skirt’ on white stipe, BC (photo by Nina Munteanu) *

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Nina Munteanu* is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. For the lates on her books, visit www.ninamunteanu.ca. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by *Pixl Press *(Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “**A Diary in the Age of Water” **was released by *Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.

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