Amanita muscaria (fly agaric) is a cool mushroom & all (reindeer guard their patches so they can trip on it!) but I'm tired of every pop-culture mushroom being the same red-cap with white-warts design. For your consideration, other pretty mushrooms 🧵
Coprinus comatus (shaggy ink cap) -- their cap is this textured white to black gradient that looks like a scene kids hair and I'm obsessed. AND they melt into useable ink after being picked!
Omphalotus illudens (jack-o'lantern mushroom) -- they're bright orange, looking like chanterelles (excep they are poisonous) UNTIL YOU TURN OUT THE LIGHTS and they glow GREEN.
Entoloma hochstetteri (blue pinkgill or werewere-kokako in Maori) is one of the few naturally occurring bright blues in nature <3 And its spores are pink! Look at how DAPPER they are.
Phallus indusiatus (Veiled Lady) is so DAINTY. The skirt reminds me of a bird cage veil. It's edible, and used in Chinese medicine and haute cuisine. There are also similar species with the same kind of "skirt" in different colours!
Gliophorus psittacinus (parrot toadstool) look like green glass over bright yellow gills. They're edible, but don't taste like much and are a bit slimy, so it's best just to admire their gorgeous glassy sheen. They grow in mossy patches, lawns and cemeteries.
Perhaps the most mesmerising, the Schizophyllum commune (Splitgill Commune). They have 23,328 biological sexes (distinct mating types) -- individuals of any mating type are compatible for mating with most other mating types. They remind me of ballgowns and fractals.
Marasmius Haematocephalus makes me think of careful origami. They can shrivel up during dry conditions and wait for rainy weather during to rehydrate and spring back to life. Their name comes from the Greek word “marsmos”, which means drying out. Resilient!
Psychadelic mushrooms often turn blue when bruised, but none are as impressive as these blueing boletes! They look like pretty inconspicuous until they are cut, when their blue pigment shines through!
Anyway I had to spend a lot of time with my coworkers this week and I talked about mushrooms a non-neurotypical amount -- so thank you internet for letting me info dump here in hopes of maintaining my facade of normalcy at the day job 😅
If anyone is feeling generous and wants to fuel my mushroom obsession, I added a bunch of new mushroom books to my Throne wishlist 🍄 throne.me/gnome_anne/wis…
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🍄𝐌𝐮𝐬𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐨𝐦 𝐟𝐨𝐥𝐤𝐥𝐨𝐫𝐞👻
I teamed up with Anna from the Mycologist’s Primer to bring you some delightfully eerie mushroom folklore. So put the kettle on, collect your rowan branch & salt, because we're talking devils, witches, troll cats, fae, will-o-wisps & more!🧵
Witch's butter (tremella mesenterica) 🧙♀️🧈 is a BRIGHT orange edible fungus. But if it's growing on your door or gate, that means you’ve been the target of a witch’s hex. The remedy? Stab the fungus & the witch will be forced to appear! That's one way to meet you new goth gf👀
A grosser & cuter version is the Scandinavian myth of troll cats🐈⬛-- witches’ familiars they made from human hair, nails, wood shavings. Troll cats gorge themselves on cow’s milk & flee gleefully, spewing up remains as "butter of the witches." If you've ever had a cat, you get it
It's closely related cousin, Clathrus ruber or Red Cage fungus. Both these friends "hatch" from "eggs" (grow from white spherical bases) that is full of green spore-bearing slime (called gleba)☺️ This friend ALSO smells like rotting meat.
Since we're talking gore, let's check in with hydnellum peckii, the Bleeding Tooth fungus! It "bleeds" bright red guttation droplets that actually has anticoagulant properties similar to heparin! Underneath, it has teeth instead of gills 🦷🦷 Cute!
Our alien-looking pasta fungus is 🍄geomyces pannorum🍄 -- and this lil guy is truly WILD. It's an extremophile, meaning it can survive (and thrive) in conditions that are so extreme we consider them *generally* hostile to life. But not this guy.
G. pannorum is a cryophile/psychrophile, meaning it can survive in *very very cold conditions* like the arctic permafrost, or under a glacier, or antarctic soil 🥶
But it's pretty flexible and lives in soil all over! India or Antarctica, he's probably vibing in the dirt.
They even found it on the rock art (cave paintings) at Lascaux!
It will chow down on mining debris, frozen leaf litter, meat, cod, gelatin, flour, gym floors, books - what won't it eat?
Death caps are the MOST LETHAL mushrooms but scientists might have discovered an antidote and it’s… green dye? Like, the exact same colour as my hair?!?!
Buckle up for a deep dive into the most dangerous mushroom toxin ☠️, CRISPR cell mutations 🧬, antidote research 🧪
🧵
The Death Cap mushroom is the kind of snack you only cronch once. Half a cap is enough to kill -- the main toxin has an LD50 (median lethal dose) of 0.3 mg which is similar to PLUTONIUM ☢️
And according to survivors, they’re pretty tasty. A truly forbidden snack.
Keep in mind, death by mushroom is INCREDIBLY RARE-- in the USA, only 3 ppl a year die by mushroom: you're 20x more likely to be killed by a lawnmower, and 100x more likely to be killed by a ladder. Fear them instead!
There are fungi at Chernobyl that EAT radiation and nuclear fallout – and that’s only the start of this wild story 🍄☢️
Buckle up for a wild thread about radioactive boars, fungal space suits, radiation-detecting fungi, black frogs and a good dose of hope! 🧵
On 26 April 1986, a reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded. It destroyed the containment building and caused a reactor core fire that lasted 8 days, spraying airborne radioactive contaminants throughout the USSR and Europe 😨
People started dying of acute radiation syndrome (ARS) (and the WHO predicts that 9000+ people will die of cancer triggered by this event). They created the Exclusion Zone – a restricted area of 2,600 km2 (1,000 sq mi) around the site where radioactive contamination is highest.
I've been thinking about D&D and the expectations we put on DMs 🧵
The DM "should" keep track of (and/or write) the world & all the NPCs, run combat, create a compelling story AND ALSO *out of game* the DM typically takes on organizational tasks and hosting. It's so much 😭
Some systems are designed to be more collaborative. In Kids on Bikes, the players create the world as much as the GM. In GMless systems, everyone shares the cognitive work equally. But it goes beyond the design, I think, into the culture of D&D.
Often D&D players feel disempowered to add to the world. They seem taken aback when I encourage them to add to the lore, or add to their backstory mid-game. There's an expectation that I've written a game that they are going to play through & they don't want to mess with it.