Mushroom art is the application of mushrooms, usually for aesthetic purposes. Mushrooms applied to human skin as part of an art project are known as mycota tattoos. More common are mushroom sculptures and other types of home decoration.
Artists who use mushrooms in their art include Eric Standley and Gary Martin, both of whom were featured on the Late Show with David Letterman.
Mushrooms are fun to eat, but they are also fascinating. Did you know there are more than 1 million species of fungi in the world? Or that mushrooms can be found on every continent except Antarctica?
Mushrooms have been used for centuries as food, medicine and in religious practices. They were also used by primitive people to color fabrics and dye leather. The Romans and Greeks ate them, as did the Chinese and Japanese. In fact, the word mushroom comes from the Chinese “ma-ling,” meaning “tree fungus.”
Tibetans use mushrooms for divination and divination-related magic. In Europe, witches used to wear them during their rituals. For a time in history, it was thought that some witches used hallucinogenic mushrooms like psilocybin or psilocyn to induce visions. However, it is now thought that these mushrooms were actually poisonous species that caused severe hallucinations.
“Fly Agaric” is the most well known of all mushrooms and can be found in many countries worldwide. It was traditionally used by many cultures around the world as an hallucinogen. Native Americans would use a preparation made from the dried cap of this mushroom as an arrow poison. A person who knows what he’s doing can still extract
Mushrooms are more closely related to animals than to plants.
Mushrooms are neither plants nor animals, but fungi. This means that they don’t produce their own food the way plants do, and they don’t move around like animals. They are a type of organism called, not surprisingly, an organism.
Mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of particular kinds of fungi. These fungi are generally microscopic and live in soil or on dead organic matter (that is, they’re saprobes). The mushroom itself is just the visible part of the fungus that grows above ground.
A mushroom’s color comes from its spores and the chemicals they contain. Some mushrooms have colors that can only be seen when you look through a microscope; such mushrooms are sometimes called Magic Mushrooms and have psychedelic properties (which probably explains why people think that fungal organisms grow everywhere).
There are more than 40,000 species of mushrooms worldwide!
Mushrooms are an amazing form of life. They are the largest living organisms on earth, they can grow larger in one day than humans can in one year, and they can live for thousands of years. Mushrooms have been around for more than 400 million years, longer than most plants and animals. They have adapted to thrive in deserts, forests, tundras, grasslands and even inside other living creatures.
Toadstool is a term commonly used to describe poisonous mushrooms that resemble the edible type. The word toadstool comes from a Germanic word meaning “poisonous plant,” and the term was first used in English in the late 15th century to describe poisonous fungi growing in the ground. It has come to mean any mushroom that resembles a small, solitary mushroom or toadstool (the latter being a common name for mushrooms).
Mushrooms which have been found in the fossil record are referred to as paleomycetes. Not much is known about paleomycetes, but many of them seem to have been quite large. A few were so large that it is difficult to tell whether they were plants or fungi.
If you’ve ever grown mushrooms, or even just looked at a mushroom you collected from the wild, you might have noticed that different parts of the same fungus will sometimes grow at different rates. This is because of something called heterokaryosis.
Heterokaryosis is a form of genetic mixing between cells, which results in different traits being expressed in the same organism. It is most commonly seen in mushroom-forming fungi in response to environmental changes such as light and temperature.
By forming new genetic combinations we get new traits, and better adaptation to changing situations.
This genetic mixing can also happen when two fungal cells merge together into one. The resulting individual is called a dikaryon. In a dikaryon, some genes come from one cell while others come from the other cell. When this happens during reproduction you end up with genetically different spores: hence the name heterokaryosis, meaning “different (karyos) nucle
Mushrooms are probably the most widely used natural hallucinogen, but that fact is not very well known. Maybe it’s because they aren’t as “out there” as LSD or magic mushrooms. The truth is that psilocybin is a naturally occurring compound and it has been used for thousands of years in Central America.
Before the Spanish invasion of Mexico, psilocybin-containing mushrooms were eaten during religious ceremonies. In the 1950s and 60s, scientists showed that psilocybin can produce experiences similar to those experienced during a psychotic break or near death experience. While these experiences are often deeply meaningful for the people who have them, they can also be frightening and confusing.
It might seem strange to hear a scientist claim that using drugs can produce spiritual experiences, but it’s true! Understanding how this happens could lead to new treatments for depression and anxiety, among other mental illnesses. It might even help us understand how our brains create the “spiritual” feelings we sometimes get without the help of psilocybin!