Toadstools, mushrooms, fungi, edible and poisonous; one thousand American fungi: How to select and cook the edible; how to distinguish and avoid the poisonous, with full botanic descriptions. Toadstool poisons and their treatment, instructions to students, recipes for cooking, etc., etc.McIlvaine, Charles
Science
Toadstools, mushrooms, fungi, edible and poisonous; one thousand American fungi: How to select and cook the edible; how to distinguish and avoid the poisonous, with full botanic descriptions. Toadstool poisons and their treatment, instructions to students, recipes for cooking, etc., etc.
McIlvaine, Charles
Cooking (Mushrooms); Edible mushrooms -- North America; Fungi -- North America; Mushrooms; Mushrooms, Poisonous -- North America
It is undoubtedly _poisonous_ to a high degree. Its juices in minute
quantity, carefully and scientifically injected into the circulation of
etherized cats, kill in less than a minute. A raw piece of the cap, the
size of a hazel nut, affects me sensibly if taken on an empty stomach.
Dizziness, nausea, exaggeration of vision and pallor result from it. The
pulse quickens and is full, and a dreaded pressure affects the
breathing. I have not noticed change in the pupil of the eye. Nicotine
from smoking a pipe with me abates the symptoms, which entirely
disappear in two hours, leaving as reminiscence a torturing, dull,
skull-pervading headache. If, as is asserted on good authority, the
Siberians use it as an intoxicant, they certainly suffer the accustomed
penalty. It is possible that persons may, in a degree, become immune to
its poison, as they do to arsenic, strychnia, opium, nicotine, or it may
be that a portion of the poison is extracted by boiling. It is, however,
extremely dangerous to rely upon extracting by any means the poison of
the Amanita, and to eat the residue. Acetic acid or vinegar does _not_
destroy the poison; it dissolves it to an extent and extracts it, and
becomes as poisonous as the plant itself. There is no means of telling
how much of the poison remains in the plant after such treatment. The
safe plan is to eat, only, of toadstools which do not contain any poison
to extract.
One redeeming virtue, alone, rests with A. muscaria—it kills flies.
=A. Frost´iana= Pk.—in honor of Charles C. Frost. POISONOUS. (Plate VI,
fig. 5, p. 6.) =Pileus= convex or expanded, bright-orange or yellow,
warty, sometimes nearly or quite smooth, striate on the margin. =Gills=
free, white or slightly tinged with yellow. =Stem= white or yellow,
stuffed, bearing a slight, sometimes evanescent ring, bulbous at the
base, the bulb _slightly margined_ by the volva. =Spores= _globose_,
8–10µ in diameter.
=Plant= 2–3 in. high. =Pileus= 1–2 in. broad. =Stem= about 2 lines
thick. June to October.
This appears like a very small form of the Fly Agaric, to which, as var.
minor, it was formerly referred. The only decided characters for
distinguishing it are its small size and globose spores. Our plant
sometimes grows in company with A. muscaria, but it seems to prefer more
dense woods, especially mixed or hemlock woods. It is generally very
regular and beautiful and has the stem quite often of a yellow color,
and the bulb margined above with a collar-like ring. _Peck_, 33d Rep.
N.Y. State Bot.
West Virginia, New Jersey, North Carolina, _McIlvaine_.
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