cogumelo (P)
mushroom (E)
champignon (F)
fungo (I)
champiñón (s)
Pilz (G)
Istrian Peninsula, Croatia
When you think of extraordinary mushrooms, you likely think of truffles. A truffle is the fruiting body of an underground fungus. They are often found around tree roots. The black truffle is probably the most well known. Truffle harvesters, with the assistance of dogs or pigs, have always been found in Italy and France. But the Istrian peninsula of Croatia, an area at the head of the Adriatic Sea south-southeast from Venice, Italy, is also a truffle capital. The peninsula is particularly known for its white truffle, the Tuber Magnatum Pico, which is found around the roots of poplar, willow, hazel, and oak trees. Its harvest season is very short, from October to December. The black truffle, or Tuber Melanosporum, is also found on the Istrian Peninsula. Its flavor is intensified by heating.
But let’s face it, while truffles may be delicious, they’re not a pretty object. A lot of mushrooms aren’t. But there is one that is so pretty it has appeared in fairy tales, video games and movies. It’s the Amanita muscaria or the fly agaric and, once again, you know it even if you think you don’t. It’s got a bright red cap with white spots. It supposedly gets its name from the practice of crumbling it into milk to attract and kill flies. It is known for being a hallucinogen but is also known for being unpredictable and so, despite some famous advice to the contrary, really shouldn’t be ingested.
While the fly agaric made an appearance in Disney’s Fantasia (with the mushrooms dancing to the Chinese Dance from the Nutcracker Suite by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky) perhaps the most famous fly agaric scene is that of the hookah-smoking Caterpillar in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Lewis Carroll is the nom de plume of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. (Edward Lear, another writer of Victorian nonsense literature, was known to introduce himself with long pseudonyms like this: Mr Abebika kratoponoko Prizzikalo Kattefello Ablegorabalus Ableborinto phashyph or Chakonoton the Cozovex Dossi Fossi Sini Tomentilla Coronilla Polentilla Battledore & Shuttlecock Derry down Derry Dumps.) Aren’t you glad your host was satisfied with Rufous Feathertail?
Lewis Carroll created the story on a boat trip in Oxford, England on July 4, 1862, for the children of his friend Henry Liddell, including Alice Liddell, the inspiration for Alice. In Alice, the hookah-smoking Caterpillar tells Alice that nibbling on one side of a round fly agaric mushroom will make her taller and nibbling on the other side will make her shorter. The hookah smoking Caterpillar made a comeback in the 1960s with the lyrics of White Rabbit, written by Grace Slick and recorded by Jefferson Airplane.
Tell them a hookah-smoking caterpillar
Has given you the call
Call Alice when she was just small
When the men on the chess board
Get up and tell you where to go
And you just had some kind of mushroom
And your mind is moving slow
Go ask Alice
I think she’ll know