Shrooms

Oops! An Oregon Newspaper Accidentally Told People to Eat an Extremely Hallucinogenic Mushroom

This is definitely not a matsutake.
This is definitely not a matsutake. Photo: MichaelMaggs/Wikimedia

If you regularly have a tough time separating edible fungi from the psychotropic kind in the wild, at least you now have the sympathies of the Oregonian photo department, which ran a photo of the wrong ‘shroom in Sunday’s paper. Foragers got some exciting news — matsutake mushroom season begins today! — though instead of a picture of the matsutake, there was, less helpfully, a photo of Amanita muscaria, a Super Mario Brothers–y, muscimol-containing specimen the paper says causes “wild behavior.” The mistaken mushroom may have inspired Alice’s trip-tastic Wonderland adventure, but it’s probably not all that great in risotto. [Oregonian]

Oops! An Oregon Newspaper Accidentally Told People to Eat an Extremely