Saturday/ handle with care

poster
The poster for this year’s wild mushroom show here in Seattle, the 50th.

The mushrooms in my back yard seem to favor this time of year to sprout up in my back yard, and I took out about a dozen of the red ones with white speckles today.    I wash my hands carefully after I had taken them out, since they might be poisonous.   Even edible mushrooms have a tendency to absorb heavy metals, so they should not be harvested in the wild if they are near roads or industrial areas.

IMG_9257 sm
Best that I can tell these mushrooms from my back yard are ‘Amanita muscaria’, commonly known as the fly agaric or fly amanita. They are poisonous and psychoactive and associated with fir trees says Wikipedia.  That is exactly where they grow in my backyard as well, close by the fir trees there.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *