Mushrooms and Toadstools

After a week of steady rain, I was eager to go outside for a lovely sunny walk. 

I got only as far as my next-door neighbor's front yard when I noticed a patch of colorful fungi sprouting in his damp lawn.

I looked twice with amazement as I recognized the mushrooms with the bright red caps and white spots as the classic toadstools from my childhood fairy tales.

Fairy Tale Mushroom aka Amanita mascara.

Immediately, I began to photograph them when my neighbor came out to see what I was up doing. 

He wasn't a stranger; we had met on several occasions, and he was very friendly but surprisingly curious about my curiosity about the mushrooms. 

We chatted about them for a moment, then he went back inside, probably thinking, crazy American, hasn’t she ever seen a mushroom!  

If he had asked, I would have told him, not these, and not up close and personal!

Although I call them fairy mushrooms, their scientific name is Amanita muscaria, Fly Agaric, or fly mushroom for short. 

I was surprised at its size, almost as tall as my 4-inch coffee mug.  

The part of the mushroom above ground is its fruiting body connected to the stipe, but underground the mushroom has a large build with many hair-like fibers. 

When sprouting, they are bright red but turn orange and yellow before flattening their tops, releasing spores, and fully decomposing.

This process is essential to our ecosystems because it releases enzymes that break down decaying matter - nature’s way of recycling and putting chemical nutrients (carbon and nitrogen) back into the soil, water, and air.

New sprouting Amanita under a decaying one.

Last stage of decay for the Amanita muscaria mushroom.

Mushrooms and toadstools are both fungi with interchangeable names.  

Poisonous mushrooms became known as toadstools because toxic toads used them as seats or stools.  

The composition of the mushroom cap is toxic alkaloids called isotonic acid and muscimol.  

They are also called shrooms or magic mushrooms.  

If consumed, their agents can affect the nervous system and cause diarrhea, nausea, intoxication, delirium, and hallucinations within 20 minutes after digesting.  

Some folks pick them, dry them, mix them in food, or brew them into a tea to make an intoxicating drug. 

A high can result in bad trips that last up to six hours, so daredevils, beware!

It would be rare for humans to die from ingesting small amounts, but it can be lethal for dogs in large quantities.  

Luckily, sometimes dogs have an instinct to stay clear of them. 

However, flys attracted to their scent become intoxicated and possibly die, which is helpful in Sydney since they have a fly problem. 

It's easy to kill a drunk fly!  

But if you need help, crush the mushroom cap, mix it with milk and make an insecticide.

Sydneysiders colloquially call folks that harvest these mushrooms mushie pickers.  

They look for them in wet areas with lots of fallen pine needles, mulch, and heavy leaf debris, which was the composition of my neighbor's yard on that day.

Wet pine cone and leaf debris - the perfect breeding ground for Amanita mushrooms.

Foraging wild mushrooms can be a thing, but please, leave that task to serious mushroom hunters unless you know which ones are safe to pick and eat.

If they have an acrid smell, they may be poisonous or hallucinogenic.

This hallucinogenic fungus often upstages fantasy characters in art, text, video game literature, and cinema.

There are legends that Santa Claus dresses in Amanita mushroom colors and feeds the fungus to his reindeer, making them believe they can fly. 

Children grow up seeing illustrations of Gnomes and fairies under umbrella-shaped mushrooms with red and white caps.  

Alice in Wonderland shrinks and grows after eating magical Amanita mushrooms.

Mario eats them in Nintendo's video game which makes him grow -  turning into Super Mario.

Papa Smurf lives under a fairy tale mushroom which may be why he is a bit pie-eyed.

Papa Smurf sitting on a magic mushroom.

I was so glad that I captured a few photos of the Amanita mushrooms from my neighbor's yard because when I returned the next day for a second photoshoot, they were gone.

Perhaps they dried up or decomposed overnight, or a dog ate them like they did my homework. 

Or maybe my neighbor thought I would harvest them for myself or, worse, snitch because they were growing wild in his front yard - the furthest things from my mind! 

He may have just been playing it safe because, according to Wikipedia, possessing large quantities of Hallucinogenic mushrooms is illegal in Australia. 

After meeting my neighbor once or twice, he should have known that I had only good intentions, but maybe not since I may have been trespassing.  

Ultimately, I'm just a curious American visitor who loves to photograph all things Sydney!

Neighbors yard without mushrooms.

Before I stumbled across the mushrooms, I thought they were just fantasy illustrations designed to appeal to children's imaginations.

But I should have known better - psychoactive toadstools in fairytales - really - you can't just make this stuff up.

I still take note of mushrooms growing wild near the house, just as long as they are not in someone's front yard.

Mushrooms in a nearby field.

Tree mushrooms.

Sometimes, being in Sydney is like being in Dorothy's OZ, where fantasies become a reality.  

And while I agree that there's no place like home in the US, I also think there's no place like Sydney!

Disappearing mushrooms . . .  

Hallucinogenic fungi . . .

Sistah in Wonderland . . . 

I am NOT in Kansas!

Black Swans

Living in Australia is like being in a storybook fantasy where myths come to life, because of its unique environment and wildlife. 

One Sunday afternoon in April we decided to spend the day at Centennial Parklands, which is a large urban park in the southeast of Sydney's Central Business District (CBD). The park has seven ornamental ponds with unique features that provide a habitat for an array of aquatic creatures.  

On that day, while sitting on a blanket along the water's edge, up glided a beautiful black swan.

It was unbeknown to me but black swans are common down-under - a term used when referring to Australia and New Zealand because they are located in the Southern Hemisphere "below" many other countries. 

The map below shows the widespread distribution of black swans throughout Australia.

Australian distribution of black swans (copyright Birds Australia Bird data)

The black swans actually breed on wetlands in the southeast and southwest regions where the climate is very erratic and the flora and fauna unique.   

They're mostly black with white wing tips that can only be seen when the birds are in flight. Their bills are a deep orange-red.  The female swans (pens) are smaller than the males (cob) and the younger ones (cygnets) are greyer in color.

These are large water birds that enjoy swimming in salt, brackish or freshwater marshes, lakes and ponds.  Swans are vegetarians and dine mostly on algae and aquatic weeds.  

In general, swans are known to be sedentary but the black swan does get around. They're often spotted soaring across the continent in a perfect V-formation.  

Swans are supposed to be monogamous and pair for life.  But, like humans, they have been known to divorce.  The female black swan will actually "cheat" on her mate to ensure a healthy clutch of eggs, in the event the male is infertile.  One of seven cygnets may be illegitimate.  Shameful!  The male swan who cares for the nest is none the wiser. 

Nevertheless, they put up a good front and pictures of swans together have become a universal symbol of love, elegance and grace. 

Universal symbol of love

The swans were very happy with us camping nearby.  Although forbidden, nearby campers were feeding them so they were keen to stay close.  

My grandson Jethro had a lot of fun trying to shoo them away.  He was warned not to get too close.  If they feel threatened they will hiss and swing their massive wings which can cause bodily harm.  

  

Due to their large size, black swans have few natural predators (humans, wolves, foxes and raccoons) and can live up to 30 or 40 years in the wild. 

Black swans were once associated with the impossible, like purple cows and flying pigs until Dutch explorer Willem de Vlamingh discovered them in Australia. 

Westerners who had believed all swans were white were baffled with the revelation and began to doubt many of their other beliefs.  

Maybe pigs can fly?

The black swan discovery lead Nassim Nicolas to write a book titled, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable.  In it he discusses his 'black swan concept' and examines the probability of unlikely events.  Nicolas writes that the world is severely affected by unpredictable and rare events that matter to history - events we could have never predicted but have changed the way we live our lives.

According to this concept, the sinking of the Titanic, 9/11, Brexit and the election of an unusual US president are black swan events.  No way did we see them coming!

Nicolas's book was a New York Times bestseller!

Swans are birds of the family Anatidae within the genus Cygnus.  Their relatives include geese and ducks.

My experience with the black swan's sudden appearance was not a concept, but a real-life fairy-tale event.  I had no advance notice that this beautiful bird would swim into my life, or that the sight of it would evoke in me a sense of childlike wonder.

Living the fairy-tale . . .

A swan of a different color . . .

Down-under, where the impossible becomes probable . . .


. . . I am not in Kansas!