It were out of place to recall my long relations with the bolete and
the agaric if the insect did not here enter into a question of grave
interest. Several mushrooms are edible, some even enjoy a great
reputation; others are formidable poisons. Short of botanical studies
that are not within everybody's reach, how are we to distinguish the
harmless from the venomous? There is a widespread belief which says that
any mushroom which insects, or, more frequently, their larvae, their
grubs, accept can be accepted without fear; any mushroom which they
refuse must be refused. What is wholesome food for them cannot fail to
be the same for us; what is poisonous to them is bound to be equally
baneful to ourselves. This is how people argue, with apparent logic, but
without reflecting upon the very different capabilities of stomachs in
the matter of diet. After all, may there not be some justification for
the belief? That is what I purpose examining.
The insect, especially in the larval stage, is the principal devourer of
the mushroom. We must distinguish between two groups of consumers. The
first really eat, that is to say, they break their food into little
bits, chew it and reduce it to a mouthful which is swallowed just as it
is; the second drink, after first turning their food into a broth, like
the bluebottles. The first are the less numerous. Confining myself to
the results of my observations in the neighborhood, I count, all told,
in the group of chewers, four beetles and a moth caterpillar. To
these may be added the mollusk, as represented by a slug, or, more
specifically, an arion, of medium size, brown and adorned with a red
edge to his mantle. A modest corporation, when all is said, but active
and enterprising, especially the moth.
At the head of the mushroom loving beetles, I will place a Staphylinid
(Oxyporus rufus, LIN.), prettily garbed in red, blue and black. Together
with his larva, which walks with the aid of a crutch at its back,
he haunts the fungus of the poplar (Pholiota aegerita, FRIES). He
specializes in an exclusive diet. I often come across him, both in
spring and autumn, and never any elsewhere than on this mushroom. For
that matter, he had made a wise choice, the epicure! This popular fungus
is one of our best mushrooms, despite its color of a doubtful white, its
skin which is often wrinkled and its gills soiled with rusty brown
at the spores. We must not judge people by appearances, nor mushrooms
either. This one, magnificent in shape and color, is poisonous; that
other, so poor to look at, is excellent.
Here are two more specialist beetles, both of small size. One is the
Triplax (Triplax russica, LIN.), who has an orange head and corselet
and black wing-cases. His grub tackles the hispid polyporus (Polyporus
hispidus, BULL.), a coarse and substantial dish, bristling at its top
with stiff hairs and clinging by its side to the old trunks of mulberry
trees, sometimes also of walnut and elm trees. The other is the
cinnamon-colored Anisotoma (Anisotoma cinnamomea, PANZ.). His larva
lives exclusively in truffles.
The most interesting of the mushroom-eating beetles is the Bolboceras
(Bolboceras gallicus, MUL.). I have described elsewhere his manner of
living, his little song that sounds like the chirping of a bird,
his perpendicular wells sunk in search of an underground mushroom
(Hydnocystis orenaria, TUL.), which constitutes his regular nourishment.
He is also an ardent lover of truffles. I have taken from between his
legs, at the bottom of his manor house, a real truffle the size of a
hazelnut (Tuber Requienii, TUL.). I tried to rear him in order to make
the acquaintance of his grub; I housed him in a large earthen pan
filled with fresh sand and enclosed in a bell cover. Possessing neither
hydnocistes nor truffles, I served him up sundry mushrooms of a rather
firm consistency, like those of his choice. He refused them all,
helvellae and clavariae, chanterelles and pezizae alike.
With a rhizopogon, a sort of little fungoid potato, which is frequent
in pine woods at a moderate depth and sometimes even on the surface, I
achieved complete success. I had strewn a handful of them on the sand of
my breeding pan. At nightfall, I often surprised the Bolboceras issuing
from his well, exploring the stretch of sand, choosing a piece not too
big for his strength and gently rolling it towards his abode. He would
go in again, leaving the rhizopogon, which was too large to take inside,
on the threshold, where it served the purpose of a door. Next day, I
found the piece gnawed, but only on the under side.
The Bolboceras does not like eating in public, in the open air; he needs
the discreet retirement of his crypt. When he fails to find his food
by burrowing under ground, he comes up to look for it on the surface.
Meeting with a morsel to his taste, he takes it home when its size
permits; if not, he leaves it on the threshold of his burrow and gnaws
at it from below, without reappearing outside. Up to the present,
hydnocistes, truffles and rhizopoga are the only food that I have
known him to eat. These three instances tell us at any rate that the
Bolboceras is not a specialist like the Oxyporus and the Triplax; he is
able to vary his diet; perhaps he feeds on all the underground mushrooms
indiscriminately.
The moth enlarges her domain yet further. Her caterpillar is a grub five
or six millimeters long, white, with a black shiny head. Colonies of it
abound in most mushrooms. It attacks by preference the top of the stem,
for epicurean reasons that escape me; thence it spreads throughout the
cap. It is the habitual boarder of the boletes, agarics, lactarii and
russulie. Apart from certain species and certain groups, everything
suits it. This puny grub, which will spin itself an infinitesimal
cocoon of white silk under the piece attacked and will later become an
insignificant moth, is the primordial ravager.
Let us next mention the arion, that voracious mollusk who also tackles
most mushrooms of some size. He digs himself spacious niches inside
them and there sits blissfully eating. Few in numbers, compared with the
other devourers, he usually sets up house alone. He has, by way of a set
of jaws, a powerful plane which creates great breaches in the object of
his depredations. It is he whose havoc is most apparent.
Now all these gnawers can be recognized by their leavings, such as
crumbs and worm holes. They dig clean passages, they slash and crumble
without a slimy trail, they are the pinkers. The others, the liquefiers,
are the chemists; they dissolve their food by means of reagents. All are
the grubs of flies and belong to the commonalty of the Muscidae. Many
are their species. To distinguish them from one another by rearing them
in order to obtain the perfect stage would involve a great expenditure
of time to little profit. We will describe them by the general name of
maggots.
To see them at work, I select, as the field of exploitation, the satanic
bolete (Boletus Satanas, LENZ.), one of the largest mushrooms that I can
gather in my neighborhood. It has a dirty-white cap; the mouths of
the tubes are a bright orange-red; the stem swells into a bulb with a
delicate network of carmine veins. I divide a perfectly sound specimen
into equal parts and place these in two deep plates, put side by side.
One of the halves is left as it is: it will act as a control, a term of
comparison. The other half receives on the pores of its undersurface a
couple of dozen maggots taken from a second bolete in full process of
decomposition.
The dissolving action of the grub asserts itself on the very day whereon
these preparations are made. The undersurface, originally a bright red,
turns brown and runs in every direction into a mass of dark stalactites.
Soon, the flesh of the cap is attacked and, in a few days, becomes a
gruel similar to liquid asphalt. It is almost as fluid as water. In this
broth the maggots wallow, wriggling their bodies and, from time to time,
sticking the breathing holes in their sterns above the water. It is an
exact repetition of what the liquefiers of meat, the grubs of the grey
flesh fly and the bluebottle, have lately shown us. As for the second
half of the bolete, the half which I did not colonize with vermin,
it remains compact, the same as it was at the start, except that its
appearance is a little withered by evaporation. The fluidity, therefore,
is really and truly the work of the grubs and of them alone.
Does this liquefaction imply an easy change? One would think so at
first, on seeing how quickly it is performed by the action of the grubs.
Moreover, certain mushrooms, the coprini, liquefy spontaneously and turn
into a black fluid. One of them bears the expressive name of the inky
mushroom (Coprinus atramentarius, BULL.) and dissolves into ink of its
own accord. The conversion, in certain cases, is singularly rapid. One
day, I was drawing one of our prettiest coprini (Coprinus sterquilinus,
FRIES), which comes out of a little purse or volva. My work was barely
done, a couple of hours after gathering the fresh mushroom, when the
model had disappeared, leaving nothing but a pool of ink upon the table.
Had I procrastinated ever so little, I should not have had time to
finish and I should have lost a rare and interesting find.
This does not mean that the other mushrooms, especially the boletes,
are of ephemeral duration and lacking in consistency. I made the attempt
with the edible bolete (Boletus edulis, BULL.), the famous cepe of our
kitchens, so highly esteemed for its flavor. I was wondering whether it
would not be possible to obtain from it a sort of Liebig's extract of
fungus, which would be useful in cooking. With this purpose, I had some
of these mushrooms cut into small pieces and boiled, on the one hand, in
plain water and, on the other, in water with bicarbonate of soda
added. The treatment lasted two whole days. The flesh of the bolete was
indomitable. To attack it, I should have had to employ violent drugs,
which were inadmissible in view of the result to be attained.
What prolonged boiling and the aid of bicarbonate of soda leave almost
intact the fly's grubs quickly turn into fluid, even as the flesh worms
fluidify hard-boiled white of egg. This is done in each instance without
violence, probably by means of a special pepsin, which is not the same
in both cases. The liquefier of meat has its own brand; the liquefier
of the bolete has another sort. The plate, then, is filled with a dark,
running gruel, not unlike tar in appearance. If we allow evaporation
free course, the broth sets, into a hard, easily crumbled slab,
something like toffee. Caught in this matrix, grubs and pupa perish,
incapable of freeing themselves. Analytical chemistry has proved fatal
to them. The conditions are quite different when the attack is delivered
on the surface of the ground. Gradually absorbed by the soil, the excess
of liquid disappears, leaving the colonists free. In my dishes, it
collects indefinitely, killing the inhabitants when it dries up into a
solid layer.
The purple bolete (Boletus purpureus, FRIES), when subjected to the
action of the maggots, gives the same result as the Satanic bolete,
namely, a black gruel. Note that both mushrooms turn blue if broken and
especially if crushed. With the edible bolete, whose flesh invariably
remains white when cut, the product of its liquefaction by the vermin is
a very pale brown. With the oronge, or imperial mushroom, the result is
a broth which the eye would take for a thin apricot jam. Tests made
with sundry other mushrooms confirm the rule: all, when attacked by the
maggot, turn into a more or less fluid mess, which varies in color.
Why do the two boletes with the red tubes, the purple bolete and the
satanic bolete, change into a dark gruel? I have an inkling of the
reason. Both of them turn blue, with an admixture of green. A third
species, the bluish bolete (Boletus cyanescens, BULL., var. lacteus,
LEVEILLE), possess remarkable color sensitiveness. Bruise it ever
so lightly, no matter where, on the cap, the stem, the tubes of the
undersurface: forthwith, the wounded part, originally a pure white, is
tinted a beautiful blue. Place this bolete in an atmosphere of carbonic
acid gas. We can now knock it, crush it, reduce it to pulp; and the
blue no longer shows. But extract a fragment from the crushed mass:
immediately, at the first contact with the air, the matter turns a most
glorious blue. It reminds us of a process employed in dyeing. The indigo
of commerce, steeped in water containing lime and sulfate of iron, or
copperas, is deprived of a part of its oxygen; it loses its color and
becomes soluble in water, as it was in the original indigo plant, before
the treatment which the plant underwent. A colorless liquid results.
Expose a drop of this liquid to the air. Straightway, oxidization works
upon the product: the indigo is reformed, insoluble and blue.
This is exactly what we see in the boletes that turn blue so readily.
Could they, in fact, contain soluble, colorless indigo? One would say
so, if certain properties did not give grounds for doubt. When subjected
to prolonged exposure to the air, the boletes that are apt to turn blue,
particularly the most remarkable, Boletus cyanescens, lose their color,
instead of retaining the deep blue which would be a sign of real indigo.
Be this as it may, these mushrooms contain a coloring principle which is
very liable to change under the influence of the air. Why should we not
regard it as the cause of the black tint when the maggots have liquefied
the boletes which turn blue? The others, those with the white flesh, the
edible bolete, for instance, do not assume this asphalty appearance once
they are liquefied by the grubs.
All the boletes that change to blue when broken have a bad reputation;
the books treat them as dangerous, or at least open to suspicion. The
name of Satanic awarded to one of them is an ample proof of our fears.
The caterpillar and the maggot are of another opinion: they greedily
devour what we hold in dread. Now here is a strange thing: those
passionate devotees of Boletus Satanas absolutely refuse certain
mushrooms which we find delightful eating, including the most celebrated
of all, the oronge, the imperial mushroom, which the Romans of the
empire, past masters in gluttony, called the food of the gods, cibus
deorum, the agaric of the Caesars, Agaricus caesareus. It is the most
elegant of all our mushrooms. When it prepares to make its appearance by
lifting the fissured earth, it is a handsome ovoid formed by the outer
wrapper, the volva. Then this purse gently tears and the jagged opening
partly reveals a globular object of a magnificent orange. Take a hen's
egg, boil it, remove the shell: what remains will be the imperial
mushroom in its purse. Remove a part of the white at the top, uncovering
a little of the yolk. Then you have the nascent imperial. The likeness
is perfect. And so the people of my part, struck by the resemblance,
call this mushroom lou rousset d'iou, or, in other words, yolk of egg.
Soon, the cap emerges entirely and spreads into a disk softer than satin
to the touch and richer to the eye than all the fruit of the Hesperides.
Appearing amid the pink heather, it is an entrancing object.
Well, this gorgeous agaric (Amanita caesarea, SCOP.), this food of the
gods the maggot absolutely refuses. My frequent examinations have
never shown me an imperial attacked by the grubs in the field. It needs
imprisonment in a jar and the absence of other victuals to provoke the
attempt; and even then the treacle hardly seems to suit them. After the
liquefaction, the grubs try to make off, showing that the fare is not
to their liking. The Mollusk also, the Arion, is anything but an ardent
consumer. Passing close to an imperial mushroom and finding nothing
better, he stops and takes a bite, without lingering. If, therefore, we
required the evidence of the insect, or even of the Slug, to know which
mushrooms are good to eat, we should refuse the best of them all. Though
respected by the vermin, the glorious imperial is nevertheless ruined
not by larvae, but by a parasitic fungus, the Mycogone rosea, which
spreads in a purply stain and turns it into a putrid mass. This is the
only despoiler that I know it to possess.
A second amanita, the sheathed amanita (Amanita vaginata, BULL.),
prettily streaked on the edges of the cap, is of an exquisite flavor,
almost equal to the imperial. It is called lou pichot gris, the
grayling, in these parts, because of its coloring, which is usually an
ashen gray. Neither the maggot nor the even more enterprising Moth
ever touches it. They likewise refuse the mottled amanita (Amanita
pantherina, D. C.), the vernal amanita (Amanita verna, FRIES) and the
lemon-yellow amanita (Amanita citrina, SCHAEFF.), all three of which are
poisonous. In short, whether it be to us a delicious dish or a deadly
poison, no amanita is accepted by the grubs. The arion alone sometimes
bites at it. The cause of the refusal escapes us. It were vain, speaking
of the mottled amanita, for instance, to allege as a reason the presence
of an alkaloid fatal to the grubs, for we should have to ask ourselves
why the imperial, the amanita of the Caesars, which is wholly free from
poison, is rejected no less uncompromisingly than the venomous species.
Could it perhaps be lack of relish, a deficiency of seasoning for
stimulating the appetite? In point of fact, when eaten raw, the amanitas
have no particular flavor.
What shall we learn from the sharper-flavored mushrooms? Here, in the
pinewoods, is the woolly milk mushroom (Lactarius torminosus, SCHAEFF.),
turned in at the edges and wrapped in a curly fleece. Its taste is
biting, worse than Cayenne pepper. Torminosus means colic producing.
The name is very suitable. Unless he possessed a stomach built for the
purpose, the man who touched such food as this would have a singularly
bad time before him. Well, that stomach the vermin possess: they
revel in the pungency of the woolly milk mushroom even as the spurge
caterpillar browses with delight on the loathsome leaves of the
euphorbiae. As for us, we might as well, in either case, eat live coals.
Is a condiment of this kind necessary to the grubs? Not at all. Here,
in the same pinewoods, is the "delicious" milk mushroom (Lactarius
deliciosus, LIN.), a glorious orange-red crater, adorned with concentric
zones. If bruised, it assumes a verdigris hue, possibly a variant of the
indigo tint peculiar to the blue-turning boletes. From its flesh laid
bare by being broken or cut ooze blood-red drops, a well-defined
characteristic peculiar to this milk mushroom. Here the violent spices
of the woolly milk mushroom disappear; the flesh has a pleasant taste
when eaten raw. No matter: the vermin devour the mild milk mushroom with
the same zest with which they devour the horribly peppered one. To them
the delicate and the strong, the insipid and the peppery are all alike.
The epithet 'delicious' applied to the mushroom whose wound weeps tears
of blood is highly exaggerated. It is edible, no doubt, but it is coarse
eating and difficult to digest. My household refuses it for cooking
purposes. We prefer to put it to soak in vinegar and afterwards to use
it as we might use pickled gherkins. The real value of this mushroom is
largely overrated thanks to a too laudatory epithet.
Is a certain degree of consistency required, to suit the grubs:
something midway between the softness of the amanitas and the firmness
of the milk mushrooms? Let us begin by questioning the olive tree agaric
or luminous mushroom (Pleurotus phosphoreus, BATT.), a magnificent
mushroom colored jujube red. Its popular name is not particularly
appropriate. True, it frequently grows at the base of old olive trees,
but I also pick it at the foot of the box, the holm oak, the plum tree,
the cypress, the almond tree, the Guelder rose and other trees and
shrubs. It seems fairly indifferent to the nature of the support. A
more remarkable feature distinguishes it from all the other European
mushrooms: it is phosphorescent. On the lower surface and there only, it
sheds a soft, white gleam, similar to that of the glowworm. It lights
up to celebrate its nuptials and the emission of its spores. There is no
question of chemist's phosphorus here. This is a slow combustion, a
sort of more active respiration than usual. The luminous emission is
extinguished in the unbreathable gases, nitrogen and carbonic acid; it
continues in aerated water; it ceases in water deprived of its air by
boiling. It is exceedingly faint, however, so much so that it is not
perceptible except in the deepest darkness. At night and even by day, if
the eyes have been prepared for it by a preliminary wait in the darkness
of a cellar, this agaric is a wonderful sight, looking indeed like a
piece of the full moon.
Now what do the vermin do? Are they drawn by this beacon? In no wise:
maggots, caterpillars and slugs never touch the resplendent mushroom.
Let us not be too quick to explain this refusal by the noxious
properties of the olive tree agaric, which is said to be extremely
poisonous. Here, in fact, on the pebbly ground of the wastelands, is the
eryngo agaric (Pleurotus eryngii, D. C.), which has the same consistency
as the other. It is the berigoulo of the Provencaux, one of the most
highly esteemed mushrooms. Well, the vermin will have none of it: what
is a treat to us is detestable to them.
It is superfluous to continue this method of investigation: the reply
would be everywhere the same. The insect, which feeds on one sort of
mushroom and refuses others, cannot tell us anything about the kinds
that are good or bad for us. Its stomach is not ours. It pronounces
excellent what we find poisonous; it pronounces poisonous what we think
excellent. That being so, when we are lacking in the botanical knowledge
which most of us have neither time nor inclination to acquire, what
course are we to take? The course is extremely simple.
During the thirty years and more that I have lived at Serignan, I have
never heard of one case of mushroom poisoning, even the mildest, in the
village; and yet there are plenty of mushrooms eaten here, especially
in autumn. Not a family but, when on a walk in the mountains, gathers
a precious addition to its modest alimentary resources. What do these
people gather? A little of everything. Often, when rambling in the
neighboring woods, I inspect the baskets of the mushroom pickers, who
are delighted for me to look. I see things fit to make mycological
experts stand aghast. I often find the purple bolete, which is classed
among the dangerous varieties. I made the remark one day. The man
carrying the basket stared at me in astonishment: 'That a poison! The
wolf's bread!' he said, patting the plump bolete with his hand. 'What
an idea! It's beef marrow, sir, regular beef marrow!' [Author's note:
People use them indiscriminately for cooking purposes, after removing
the tubes on the under side, which are easily separated from the rest of
the mushroom.]
He smiled at my apprehensions and went away with a poor opinion of my
knowledge in the matter of mushrooms.
In the baskets aforesaid, I find the ringed agaric (Armillaria mellea,
FRIES), which is stigmatized as valde venenatus by Persoon, an expert
on the subject. It is even the mushroom most frequently made use
of, because of its being so plentiful, especially at the foot of the
mulberry trees. I find the Satanic bolete, that dangerous tempter; the
belted milk mushroom (Lactarius zonarius, BULL.), whose burning flavor
rivals the pepper of its woolly kinsman; the smooth-headed amanita
(Amanita leiocophala, D. C.), a magnificent white dome rising out of
an ample volva and fringed at the edges with floury relics resembling
flakes of casein. Its poisonous smell and soapy aftertaste should lead
to suspicion of this ivory dome; but nobody seems to mind them.
How, with such careless picking, are accidents avoided? In my village
and for a long way around, the rule is to blanch the mushrooms, that is
to say, to bring them to the boil in water with a little salt in it.
A few rinsings in cold water conclude the treatment. They are then
prepared in whatever manner one pleases. In this way, what might at
first be dangerous becomes harmless, because the preliminary boiling and
rinsing have removed the noxious elements.
My personal experience confirms the efficacy of this rustic method.
At home, we very often make use of the ringed agaric, which is reputed
extremely dangerous. When rendered wholesome by the ordeal of boiling
water, it becomes a dish of which I have naught but good to say. Then
again the smooth-headed amanita frequently appears upon my table, after
being duly boiled: if it were not first treated in this fashion, it
would be hardly safe. I have tried the blue-turning boletes, especially
the purple bolete and the Satanic. They answered very well to the
eulogistic term of beef marrow applied to them by the mushroom picker
who scouted my prudent counsels. I have sometimes employed the mottled
amanita, so ill famed in the books, without disastrous result. One of
my friends, a doctor, to whom I communicated my ideas about the boiling
water treatment, thought that he would make the experiment on his
own account. He chose the lemon-yellow amanita, which has as bad a
reputation as the mottled variety, and ate it at supper. Everything went
off without the slightest inconvenience. Another, a blind friend, in
whose company I was one day to taste the Cossus of the Roman epicures,
treated himself to the olive tree agaric, said to be so formidable. The
dish was, if not excellent, at least harmless.
It results from these facts that a good preliminary boiling is the
best safeguard against accidents arising from mushrooms. If the insect,
devouring one species and refusing another, cannot guide us in any way,
at least rustic wisdom, the fruit of long experience, prescribes a rule
of conduct which is both simple and efficacious. You are tempted by a
basketful of mushrooms, but you do not feel very sure as to their
good or evil properties. Then have them blanched, well and thoroughly
blanched. When it leaves the purgatory of the stewpan, the doubtful
mushroom can be eaten without fear.
But this, you will tell me, is a system of cookery fit for savages: the
treatment with boiling water will reduce the mushrooms to a mash; it
will take away all their flavor and all their succulence. That is a
complete mistake. The mushroom stands the ordeal exceedingly well.
I have described my failure to subdue the cepes when I was trying
to obtain an extract from them. Prolonged boiling, with the aid of
bicarbonate of soda, so far from reducing them to a mess, left them very
nearly intact. The other mushrooms whose size entitles them to culinary
consideration offer the same degree of resistance. In the second place,
there is no loss of succulence and hardly any of flavor. Moreover, they
become much more digestible, which is a most important condition in
a dish generally so heavy for the stomach. For this reason, it is the
custom, in my family, to treat them one and all with boiling water,
including even the glorious imperial.
I am a Philistine, it is true, a barbarian caring little for the
refinements of cookery. I am not thinking of the epicure, but of the
frugal man, the husbandman especially. I should consider myself amply
repaid for my persistent observations if I succeeded in popularizing,
however little, the wise Provencal recipe for mushrooms, an excellent
food that makes a pleasant change from the dish of beans or potatoes,
when we can overcome the difficulty of distinguishing between the
harmless and the dangerous.
[Recorder's note: Modern mycologists warn against Fabre's claim that
boiling neutralizes all mushroom poisons.]