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Dec

23

The sex life of an Amanita muscaria mushroom

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Today I discovered a fascinating website – all about Amanita muscaria mushrooms. It’s the work of a university student, so it’s more about mycology than metaphysics, but still it’s worth a visit.

The site isn’t totally academic, though. There are some references to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Mario Brothers and Siberian shamans.

One thing I found especially interesting was how these mushrooms reproduce – hence the title. Although, in retrospect I believe mushrooms do it by asexual reproduction, so a better title would have referred to its lack of sex life, I suppose.

Anyway, deer in the forests are helpful in encouraging the continuation of these mushrooms. It seems that herbivores such as deer and cattle eat the shrooms, and then later poop out the spores, which are known as basidia – thus helping them to spread across the landscape.

Thanks to Erik Christianson at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse for setting up the website, which you can see by clicking here.