World’s Largest Fungus or World’s Largest Mushroom & Magic Mushroom Tales
Throughout history there have been a number of influential—or what we would now call viral—hoaxes relating to mushrooms. That’s right. Mushroom malarkey. Fungi fraud. Toadstool tall tales. (We could do this all day.)
As ridiculous as that might seem, you’d be surprised to learn that we couldn’t even manage to mention all the mushroom hoaxes that have circulated throughout the years—so we just picked the most interesting ones for this post.
Spores and Mushroom Nostalgia
Let’s kick things off with a little nostalgia and about mushroom spores where the growing all begins from. If you were on the internet in the early 2000s, you might even remember seeing this one in an email “forward” chain:
Do You Remember Seeing This Photo of The World’s Largest Mushroom?
Looking at this picture now, it’s comical that people might have thought it was real—maybe over time our “Photoshop senses” have gotten better, having been exposed to so many faked images.
Oregon’s Monster Mushroom is World’s Biggest Living Thing
However, in the 2000s, the above image was referenced as being the world’s biggest living life form. Headlines like The Largest Living Organism on Earth from Scientific American referred to Oregon’s monster mushroom. Is it the world’s biggest living thing? This claim hit the news, and people were captivated… especially when they saw the picture.
Largest Living Organism on Earth is A Fungus & Mycelium Spores
It’s true that the largest living organism on earth is a fungus. As we’ve written before about mycelium spores here on the Quality Spores website, the fungus is a mycelial mat that lives in Oregon and spans nearly 10 square kilometers. Mycologists believe that it might even be over 8,000 years old.
Spore Syringe Yields The Whole Fruiting Organism
Journalists apparently weren’t aware, or perhaps they were, and just didn’t care, that calling this mycelial mat a “mushroom” was inaccurate. Mushrooms are the mature fruiting bodies of a fungus and when not in the forest are cultivated using a spore syringe, which yields the whole organism eventually, much of which presents as mushroom mycelium.
The big mushroom image originated from the lab of Tom Bruns at the University of California at Berkeley, which was of course created as a joke. Tom Bruns comically referred to the mushroom in the picture as Boletus photoshopus.
Soviet Chairman Vladimir Lenin Was a Mushroom (Literally)
In 1991, a Russian performance artist named Sergei Kuryokhin managed to to get himself on the television program The Fifth Wheel, which could be compared to 60 Minutes here in the United States—in other words, a pretty legitimate, hard-facts kind of show.
During the course of his interview, Kuryokhin spun a yarn so wild that in retrospect it’s surprising that anyone believed it… but they did. In fact, it’s estimated that an approximate 11 million people saw the interview, and as a result, a large portion of Russian society ultimately believed his claims.
So what was Kuryokhin’s claim, anyway? He convinced millions of viewers that former Soviet Chairman Vladimir Lenin was, in fact, a mushroom.
You can watch the whole interview here on YouTube.
Psychedelics and Psilocybin Mushrooms Lore
Through a series of semi-believable logical fallacies and so-called sources (including American author and well-known anthropologist Carlos Castaneda), Kuryokhin said that as a result of regularly consuming psychedelics and psilocybin mushrooms, Lenin had ultimately became a mushroom himself.
If you watch the interview itself, you can see how Kuryokhin builds on his case with a number of half-baked but sort of plausible ideas. Here, 30 years later, it all may seem a bit ridiculous, but at the time it caused something of a furor in Russia.
The lesson? Don’t believe everything you see on TV (a repeating theme throughout this post, as you’ll see).
Earth-Shatteringly Fake: The “Aphrodisiac” Mushroom From Hawaii
Loosely gathered facts based on a vague and unscientific “study” with a tiny sample size? Check.
Mushroom Fungi Facts
Clickbait headlines and other Fungi Facts.
Stock images of a pretty woman in a suggestive pose? Check.
Here we have all the trappings of modern sensationalism in journalism. A few years ago, news outlets began publishing pieces with headlines like…
- Orgasmic mushroom can give women an ‘earth-shattering’ experience – and it looks like this
- The mysterious mushroom that triggers spontaneous orgasms in women: Phallic fungus releases ‘hormone-like compounds’ to excite with a single sniff
- ‘Orgasm Mushroom’: Hawaiian Mushroom Causes Instantaneous Orgasm In Females
The Orgasm Mushroom
The flurry of news reports about the “orgasm mushroom” that would give any ladies in the vicinity an “earth-shattering experience” just by smelling it is, of course, easily debunked.
The gist of the study was that 36 women and men were asked to smell the “fetid” aroma of the mushroom. 16 of the subjects were female, and just six of them were claimed to have self-reported as having experienced a “mild spontaneous orgasm.” Everyone else, apparently, just thought the mushroom smelled pretty bad.
Christie Wilcox, writing for Discover Magazine, was so intrigued by the story that she actually sought out the mushroom itself.
I bent down, pressing my hands in the soft mulch on either side of the fungus, and let the air out of my lungs. Then I pushed my face next to its orange stalk and breathed in as deeply as I could.
Christie Wilcox, Expedition Ecstasy: Sniffing Out The Truth About Hawai‘i’s Orgasm-Inducing Mushroom
Sadly, no amount of sniffing managed to bring the author’s journey to a satisfying climax. In fact, she ultimately managed to get in touch with one of the supposed authors of the study, John Holliday. Of the orgasm mushroom, he reportedly said, “This was never meant to be believed, it’s just a big hoax.”
Mycologists and Cryptocurrency in Mycology Researchers – Terminology and Facts
As amusing as all this is, the real takeaway here is that one really must think critically when reading the news. As we pointed out a couple of weeks ago, all too often the news media will make mistakes, use terminology incorrectly, misquote cryptocurrency in mycology research sources as related to Bitcoin purchases, or simply report on unverified information and present it as fact. When researching the often-misunderstood subject of mycology, you must keep your wits about you—and acknowledge that not everybody else will follow your lead.
Try Studying Psychedelics: Psychedelic Mushroom Strains and Psilocybin Mushroom Spores or Exotic Psychedelic Mushroom Spores
While the stories we discussed here today are fake, it’s entirely real that psychedelic mushroom strains and psilocybin spores are legal to buy in most of the United States, and you can and you can buy exotic psychedelic mushroom spores online for research purposes at Qualityspores.store!