An Edible Poisonous Mushroom

Less than 1% of all fungi in the world are actually poisonous, but that stereotypical red one with white spots is one not to be meddled with, even in Maine. On its own, the genus, Amanita, is responsible for roughly 95% of  all mushroom poisonings. Even though not all of the 600 species found within this genus are capable of killing a person, and some are actually perfectly safe to eat, many share the characteristics of a red or orange cap with white spots, with only subtle differences between them. Therefore, many around the world risk misidentifying a poisonous species of mushroom for one to cook up and put on the dinner table when they go out hunting for the edible amanita mushrooms. 

On one of the wilderness trips I was leading, I found a large Amanita mushroom living beneath a tree at the center of my campsite. I am not good enough with fungi to identify this specimen to species, but if I had a chance to guess, I would say it was the psychoactive and eventually poisonous Amanita muscaria. 

This mushroom is native to the Northern Hemisphere, in the temperate and boreal regions, and since being accidentally introduced elsewhere, has become common in the Southern Hemisphere as a symbionts to introduced pine trees. 

Muscaria has many interesting entheogenic and culinary histories that come from all over the world. From being sold here in North America as a food source to being deeply imbedded in the cultural identities of Lithuanians, Vikings and communities in the far East, muscaria has a long history relating both to its toxicity and its edibility.

In places where the mushroom is eaten, it is first boiled in several waters to leach out the water soluble muscimol and then pickled or turned into a sauce. A mushroom guide may label it as edible, but not without a good parboil beforehand, to avoid the unreliable effects of its formidable neurotoxins. 

Tetragnatha viridis

This is a long jawed orb weaver common in the Eastern US and Southeastern Canada. I found it building its web on the front tire of my car this afternoon. I am in Maine getting lifeguard and wilderness first aid certifications so that I can be qualified and prepared for my job as a wilderness trip leader for a camp this summer. I look forward to being outside all summer long, learning about the wilderness and teaching kids what i know how to have fun in the mountains and on unpopulated rivers in central and Northern Maine. 

The Orb weavers are distinguished by their spiral webs and their long spindly legs. The long jawed orb weavers, which are extremely common in gardens and forests, are often found sitting in an elongated posture behind long, thin blades of talk grasses or other vegetation. The picture below shows their impressive jaw structure:

The Red Eft

Red Spotted Newt Juvenile ("Eft")
by Mary Furth

I was walking in Warbler Wood in Connecticut, searching for the owner of a raspy, but intriguingly varied bird call (turned out to be an Oven Bird) despite the muggy heat and the bugs that were almost oppressive.  Under the lofty canopy of this old growth forest, what little breeze there may have been was being absorbed by the old branches whose young leaves trembled providing dappled sunlight to the forest floor.  As I walked along the winding pathway, I noticed how large the wild violets were in comparison to the almost miniature scale of those found at this time of year in Maine.  I took a specimen to press and compare to my Maine specimens.  Around one bend, I noticed a small, bright red something sitting in the middle of the path in front of me.  It was a Red Eft making use of the shade provided by a cinquefoil leaf.  The bright red color and the bright spots outlined with black halos that lined its tiny back were striking. 

Red Eft
by Mary Furth

The Red Eft, also known as the Red Spotted Newt, or Notophthalmus viridescens, is the only newt found east of the Mississippi, and one of the two common newts in the United States.  Newts are far more diverse in Europe and Asia, and the Red Eft can be found in many of these places around the world.  In New England, it is especially common. 

(As an aside newts and salamanders are terms that are constantly interchanged, and have become confused.  It turns out, all newts are salamanders, because they are in the family Salamandridae, whereas not all salamanders are newts.  So it's ok to call a newt a salamander, but incorrect to call a salamander that is not a newt, a newt....)

Red-Spotted Newt Larvae
by George Grall

 When I think of a newt, I think immediately of a dull greenish or brown aquatic organism swimming around in a murky pond.  I never realized how different in appearance the three developmental stages of a newt are.  Newly hatched newts, (larval stage), look like delicate tadpoles with noticeably protruding, tentacle-like gills.  Just like tadpoles, newt larvae gradually develop four limbs, and the ability to breath outside of the water.  Soon they seek food and shelter on land, and with their newly found terrestrial livelihoods, they busy themselves with keeping spiders, flies, caterpillars and other bite-sized invertebrates in constant fear of their tiny lives.  And what's more, their bright orange color, which is only present in this juvenile stage, (in which it is known as an "Eft") reminds potential predators that they are toxic and inedible and thus perfectly invincible little critters.  

Because of their toxins, Red Spotted Newts have no predators.  The Western Newt, which is the only other newt found in the U.S., has one predator.  Incredibly, a few populations of garter snakes have developed a resistance to newt toxins.  A mutation in the snakes' genomes renders the newt toxin inadequate, which in turn applies selective pressure towards newts with higher levels of toxin.  In this "evolutionary arms race", the snakes continually respond to selective pressures which produce populations of continually more resistant snakes. 

Red Spotted Newt Adult
By Gary Nafis

In the third stage of the newt life cycle, a second metamorphosis occurs, and the newt returns to an aquatic lifestyle, rarely, or never again to venture back onto land.  At this point, the red spotted newt's bright orange/red skin has changed into a yellowy, greenish-brown.  It keeps it's limbs and develops external gills once more.  It is no longer called an "Eft".  Despite the fact that the adult stages has less than vivid coloring, the red spots encircled by their black halos persist to warn of their toxicity, which is lethal to predators who attempt to ingest them.  

The red spotted newt is one of the few that is merely toxic through ingestion.  Newts are often thought of as extremely toxic because in most cases,  one must only touch their skin to feel the effects of their toxins.  Therefore, Red Spotted Newts may be handled gently, with no adverse effects to a curious amateur naturalist. 

Red spotted Newts are pretty to see, especially in their juvenile, "Eft" stage, but they are also important as an indicator species.  Literature suggests that Red Spotted Newts are "area sensitive" (Hager, 1998), meaning that they were absent on smaller islands, but present on larger ones.  As a result, these newts may be a good indicator of habitat fragmentation.  As habitat is used for development and destroyed with deforestation and pollution, the land is in effect divided into islands. The presence or absence of the Red Spotted Newt may give scientists an idea of the extent to which habitat fragmentation is effecting wildlife.  

For more information, refer to this bibliography and the accompanying website: Notophthalmus viridescens

Mirrors and their Manifestations

Mirrors.  We've all looked in one, and many of us depend on our reflections to let us know we are presentable to venture out into the world.  But how much of what we see in that mirror can we really take at face value?  The folks on Radiolab (93.9 FM) have a thought provoking episode detailing what a reflection means, how it can fool us, and why a reflection is not what it seems to be.  Listen to the podcast before you read on:



On the podcast, we hear about the life changing realization of one man's perception of himself based on what he sees in the mirror and how different his perceptions are from those of everyone else who see only his non-mirror image self every day.  Throughout a long childhood of being bullied and belittled, the poor guy one day makes a crazy discovery--all these years he has parted his hair to the right, thinking it was to the left, which is how he saw it in the mirror.  The very day he changes his hair part, he is welcomed into society in a way he never dreamed could be possible for him.  Because a mirror reflects light, our brains receive an image that has the completely opposite orientation of what the actual object being reflected is.  Now, whether or not parting your hair to the right will make you a social pariah is another topic, perhaps best answered by psychology, but this one man's trials bring up a whole slew of fascinating points and questions.

One of these questions is: Are mirror images the same as the objects being reflected?   The answer lies in the thoughts and discoveries of biologists, chemists, mathematicians, authors, and philosophers who have all tackled this idea with interest.  From a scientific point of view, we can talk about the physical orientation of molecules.  The idea of chirality deals with molecules whose mirror images are not identical to the original molecule.  We assume a mirror image is just a reversal of orientation on a page like backwards text, or a film negative, but mirror images apply differently to molecules like the all important building blocks of life, amino acids and other proteins and sugars.  Here is a good time to bring in Lewis Carol's "Alice Through the Looking Glass and What she Found There."  Alice asks her ever present cat, "How would you like to live in a looking-glass house, kitty?  I wonder if they'd give you milk there?  Perhaps looking-glass milk isn't good to drink..."  In fact, it wouldn't be good to drink at all.  Lactose, the major sugar in milk, is L-chiral (left-handed orientation), meaning that if you take the mirror image of the molecule, you will find that you have something completely different, D-chiral which is in a right handed orientation and is called Beta galactosidase, which is not digestible, and is what many of us lactose intolerant people know as lactase.  (Lactase milk has added lactase in it to help us digest the lactose, but the difference is that all the lactose is not replaced by lactase).  Mirror milk, in essence, would be a different liquid (kliM), and would be awful and indigestible!

So what do people in other disciplines say about mirrors and their manifestations?  Leave a comment about things you have heard or read about.

Some Pictures from the Field

A Day as a Tourist

The Monteverde Institute

Monteverde, Costa Rica

1400ft

Strangler Fig (Ficus)

I am living with a Tico family and so I am experiencing Costa Rican culture right in the family center where many traditions in cooking, story telling and daily life are practiced.  Each morning I wake up to the sounds of a neotropical forest--parrots, motmots, robins, cicadas, and wind.  The wind blows almost constantly here, because we are directly in the path of the trade winds, and sometimes at night I wake thinking for sure the roof will blow away.  We wake early to take advantage of the beautiful mornings, and walk to our research sites, which is always a pleasure.  There is plenty of birding and plant spotting to be had, and each of us in our group of seven stops periodically to point something out.  As a result, we never get places quickly, but there is so much to see and hear and experience that it is impossible to simply pass by.

Yesterday we went to Curi Cancha, which is a preserve about a twenty minute walk from the institute.  We decided to take a break from our work (i.e. bushwacking through dense jungle, complete with Tarzan vines, I must add, and setting transects and counting fruiting plants) and be tourists for a day.  We had a guide who could mimmick bird calls very well.  I kept reaching for my binoculars to look for a motmot or a quetzal that I thought was very near, but it was just our guide attempting to attract one of these territorial birds. (Sometimes you can hear a distinct call coming from the forest, and you get excited about the prospects of seeing an awesome bird, but you can't help but wonder if it is just another guide trying to attract one for tourists).

At the end of the hike, I came round a bend to see our guide hugging a huge fig tree.  "Mi abuelo!" he said.  Fig trees were clearly his favorite thing in the reserve.  He pointed out each one we passed, as if it was the most amazing spectacle we had seen all day (some of them pretty much were).  "Es increible!!!" he would say at a tree not a stone's throw from the last one we had experienced.  And by experienced, I mean, standing inside the hemiepiphytes and looking up through the hollow middle and seeing all the life that consider this impressive plant to be "their bed and breakfast" as our guide put it.  The strangler fig is an epiphyte in its early life, which means it does not depend on the ground soil at all to live.  Instead of sending roots into the soil, it has adapted to germinate at the top of the canopy and therefore receives light that below the tree tops is a resource well competed for.  Once established, it becomes a hemiepiphyte, sending large roots down to the soil, and anchoring itself around its host tree.  At this point, the host tree is ancient history, as the strangler fig has cut off both its supply of sunlight and its ability to grow.  The host tree rots, leaving an empty space inside and all the way up the fig tree.  The effect is an entanglement of roots that have grown into each and formed buttresses and windows and criss-crossing patterns that make some of the older figs look like nature cathedrals in the woods.  This phenomenon is truly a wonder to see.

Our guide's "abuelo tree" had a smooth, round section towards the bottom and it did look perfect por abrazando.  "If I hug a tree all the monkeys will climb off my back, because this is my grandfather!"  It was funny to see how genuinely sure of his statement he was.  but i also admired his positivity--that he could find a psychological place to put his daily burdens and be mentally free of them at least for the time being.  I need to find a place to let the monkeys off my back too!  After some of us finished tree hugging, we swung on a long vine and felt like George of the jungle for a few seconds.  It was great!

When the day was nearly over and after walking all through the busque again, on our own, and covering such topics as our plant taxonomy, JFK's assassination from a conspiracy theorist's pint of view and favourite movies, we walked back to an open field with citrus trees and purple stachytarpeta bushes outlining a gorgeous view of the sunset and the valley and water below.  What I enjoyed most about our day of walking through the reserve was that we were in no hurry, had no destination, and Professor Stone would stop periodiclly to teach us about a particular plant or tell an awesome story.  There is no better place to learn than outside while walking.  We completed our fulfilling day by playing hacky-sack in the dazzling sunset.  "What a terrible Jan Plan!" somebody exclaimed.  We all hurriedly agreed and wished we were in our dorms looking out our windows at coldness, and classrooms, and computer screens.