In the swamps of Florida, there exists a tiny brown mushroom quite unlike anything humans have seen before: one that’s toxic and trippy at the same time.
In a study out today, researchers at the University of Florida and other institutions describe a mushroom that can pump out both deadly amatoxins and psilocybin, the active ingredient responsible for the psychedelic effects of recreationally used magic mushrooms. The genetics of this species—nicknamed the “dark magic mushroom”—may tell us something important about fungi and their evolution, the researchers said.
“Humanity’s cultural infatuation with mushrooms has long been bookended by two categories: mushrooms that induce psychedelic experiences and mushrooms that are deadly toxic. Our discovery of the ‘dark magic mushroom’ represents an unusual convergence of worlds, where we now know of this rare and unusual species that produces the chemistry responsible for both properties,” lead author Andrew Kunik, a fungal biologist at the University of Florida, told Gizmodo.
As is often the case in science, Kunik and his team’s discovery was more fortuitous than intentional.
The team originally set out to learn more about a broad and hard-to-distinguish group of fungi known as little brown mushrooms; they were specifically hoping to find species belonging to the genus Galerina that could produce amatoxins, one of the main compounds that can make mushrooms especially deadly…
