I pick my houseplants following a simple rule: they either have to be very exotic or they have to be edible. Preferably both, like my pineapple plant.
A couple of months ago I purchased a coconut plant, complete with the coconut it grew out of, all for something like $10 (at IKEA of all places). And this morning I found a bonus – overnight a few mushrooms spontaneously sprouted in the same pot.
Do you think these are poisonous?
That’d be one of the vast array of “little brown mushrooms”.
May be poisonous, maybe not. You probably don’t want to test ‘em.
Poisonous mushrooms are truly evil. If they don’t kill you, they can do things like liquify your kidneys or make your liver jump out of your gut like in Alien.
Many an amateur mushroom hunter has rendered themselves dead or unable to digest food as the result of a mistaken mushroom identification.
For the cats’ sake, I would ditch those mushrooms immediately. If they are poisonous, a little nibble could be enough to kill something that weighs ten pounds.
Anyhow, if they contain some psilocybin, it really is a treat. :) Too bad it’s really, really hard to identify mushrooms; the differences are often very subtle.
My cats weight way more than 10 pounds. And they can’t really get to where the mushrooms are. I threw out the musrooms for the fear that they might release freaky mind-control spores all over my bedroom.
Yeah, mushrooms is one area where I don’t really gastro-venture into the unknown much. But I am planning on getting one of those morel growing kits I’ve seen advertized in google ads in some post of mine. I also have a tea mushroom (well, not actually a mushroom) that I’m gonna write about soon.
Mushrooms are just awesome, though. Many fungi have up to 16 sexes in that every cell has 4 sets of chromosomes that can be the equivalent of all 16 combinations of 4 x’s and 4 y’s. The spores are plentiful and many people — myself included — are quite thoroughly allergic to them. Hell, one orange goes bad and shoots spores and I’m miserable for several hours.
I had a random post about mushrooms a while ago:
http://www.friday.com/bbum/2006/01/07/butterflies-santa-cruz-and-state-beaches/
They have a vulva, usually a bad sign. Ditch ‘em.
Nice Blog, nice pictures
but those comments about mushrooms -no:-) These guys know nothing about mushrooms. I love all kind of mushrooms and there are only a few species containing a deadly poison. If you are really interested, what kind of mushrooms grew there, go to the following website: sorry the website is in german, but they are the real experts there. The most dangerours mushrooms are also clearly described.
http://www.tintling.com
It is hard to say, only by seeing this picture, what kind of mushrooms are growing there, but I think they can tell you…
I will drop by again! Mathias Will