Fiji: A Grow-Log Pictorial (2nd Flush complete Day 46-49)

[mjshroomer]

Day 46 of the 2nd Flush of the Fiji Cubes in a Terrarium after mixing the rye berry seed mycelia with the compost.
7 Images of day 45.















mjshroomer

[mjshroomer]

Day 47 of the 2nd Flush of the Fiji Cubes in a Terrarium after mixing the rye berry seed mycelia with the compost.
9 Images of day 47.



















mjshroomer

[mjshroomer]

Day 48 of the 2nd Flush of the Fiji Cubes in a Terrarium after mixing the rye berry seed mycelia with the compost.
10 Images of day 48.





















mjshroomer

[mjshroomer]

Day 49, the last day of the 2nd Flush of the Fiji Cubes in a Terrarium after mixing the rye berry seed mycelia with the compost.
15 Images of day 49.































Commentary:

If you recall, I noted that at the beginning of this grow-log pictorial on Fiji in part I of the 1st flush that I had noticed an error which R. Gordon Wasson had mistakenly placed into the text of his paper from the 1959 issue of the Herbalist on "Wild Mushrooms A World of Wonder and Adventure."

In this article which Dr. Wasson presented for publication, were several case histories from the past regarding accidental ingestion's which were reported in both medical and mycological journals in both English, Japanese and other foreign languages.

After R. Gordon Wasson's article appeared in Life Magazine in May of 1957 and in July the International edition appeared, Dr. Wasson received hundreds of letters in regards to his discoveries.

In his 1959 article in the Herbalist, Dr. Wasson discussed a series of published reports of intoxications which were obvious to the reader that they were inebriations caused by psilocybian mushrooms. He then mentioned three cases of intoxications from letters written to him after each person had read his article in Life.
One from Colorado, The second was from a Polish immigrant to the USA who was a relative of the author of Lolita and

the third letter brings us to Fiji

Those three letters sent to Dr. Wasson told of accidental inebriation's by normal people from three different parts of the world.

The third letter was from a man named Kenneth McKenney who worked for the Emperor Gold Mining Co. Ltd., who wrote the following letter from Vatkualoa in the Fijis and related in his letter to Dr. Wasson, his tale of an intoxication of a mushroom he described as follows:

:
I picked the mushrooms, which from your illustrations appear to be a species of Stropharia [JWA note Stropharia = Psilocybe cubensis], about 4 o’clock in the afternoon. To me they looked innocent enough. Their yellow tinge I thought due to the sun they had been in all day. They grew in dung.

Later Mr. McKenney wrote:

:
As far as I have been able to determine the Fijians do not eat these mushrooms although they enjoy the standard variety. Their name for the mushrooms is viu-ni-tevoro which freely translated means devil’s parasol, tevoro being devil and viu the name given to the native fan-palm the leaf of which is used in the same way as a parasol. Nor have I unearthed any legendary power of ritual associated with fungoid growth but these secrets are hard to come by and such information will take time…

Then Dr. Wasson added the following comment following the letter by Mr. Kenneth McKenney:

:
Viu-ni-tevoro---Devil’s Parasol! How that name, redolent with the awe-struck emotions of countless generations of unlettered Fijians, reminds us of the mushroom names that recur endlessly in our common vocabularies all over the world!

I want to add the complete paragraph of Dr. Wasson's statement posted above which appeared at the end of this latter paragraph by Mr. McKenney from Dr. Wasson's above noted paper from the 1959 issue of the Herbalist in which Dr. Wasson made a major error in misidentifying the mushroom in question as another species which is not found in dung.

Because of the Fijian word for the mushrooms, Dr. Wasson made a statement of other cultures and the words they had used in their past to identify such toxic shrooms which should be avoided. He used a word from another journal publication of accidental ingestion and because Mr. McKenney, the author of the letter referred to by Dr. Wasson, quoted in the letter from Dr. Wasson's article and from Life Magazine, article identified it as a species of Stropharia from the Life Magazine article, of which the only Stropharia in the Life Magazine article which was hand-painted in beautiful water colors by the late mycologist Roger Heim, was Stropharia cubensis and Mr. Kenneth McKenney had noted in his letter to Dr. Wasson that it grew in dung.

However, at the end of Mr. McKenney's letter in Dr. Wasson's article he names a mushroom from another country with the local name given to the mushroom as the one which Mr. McKenney had eaten.

I am surprise that after 60 years no one else has ever noticed this error and I am sorry Gordon is not alive so that I could bring it to his attention. But I will publish a short communication in a journal with the correct data.

In the meantime, here are Dr. Wasson's own words which I am assuming were an accidental misnomer caused by confusion of the identities of known psilocybian species which were later identified as causing intoxications' between 1911 Japan and 1957-1959. I am sure Dr. Wasson did not intently misidentify this species.

Remember that Mr. McKenney identified it form Roger Heim's water-color illustrations posted in Dr. Wasson's 1957 Life Magazine article. And the fact that it grew in Dung, I am surprised that Gordon did not notice the error he made in reference to what species Mr. McKenney had consumed.

Mr. McKenney wrote of the local Fijian name for the Stropharia cubensis species he had eaten in Fiji of which Dr. Wasson wrote about:

:
As far as I have been able to determine the Fijians do not eat these mushrooms although they enjoy the standard variety. Their name for the mushrooms is viu-ni-tevoro which freely translated means devil’s parasol, tevoro being devil and viu the name given to the native fan-palm the leaf of which is used in the same way as a parasol. Nor have I unearthed any legendary power of ritual associated with fungoid growth but these secrets are hard to come by and such information will take time…

Viu-ni-tevoro---Devil’s Parasol! How that name, redolent with the awe-struck emotions of countless generations of unlettered Fijians, reminds us of the mushroom names that recur endlessly in our common vocabularies all over the world! In Japan the very mushroom that our friend Mr. McKenney ate is called Warai-take, "laughter mushroom," and the same name, curiously enough, is bestowed on Panaeolus papilionaceus. The Chinese character that represents it was used by the statesman and writer Yeh Meng-to (A.D. 1077-1148, where he speaks of it in his Pi-shu Lu-hua, "Notes of a Summer Holiday."

Actually, I believe the actual mushroom identified as warai-take was most likely, Panaeolus subbalteatus and not P. papilionaceus. Warai-taki (laughing mushroom) is suppose to be the Maitake mushroom of the 11th century and Dr. Wasson identified if from journal literature as Panaeolus papilionaceus (also sometimes referred to as odoritake, an alternative name implying, "jumping mushroom." and ō -warai-taki (Big Laughing mushroom), actually referred to what was latter believed to be identified as a mushroom which fruits in decayed wood and dead tree trunks (a species most probably Gymnopilus spectabilis. I note this because now several articles also identified the big laughing mushrooms as a species of Gymnopilus, originally noted as G. spectabilis, but could be any one of a number of bluing Gyms which contain psilocybine. Later in James H. Sanford's journal publication, Japan's Laughing mushrooms published in Economic Botany on Japanese psilocybian fungi form folk tales [Note form JWA: Sanford, J. H. 1972. Japan's laughing mushrooms. Economic Botany vol. 26:174-181.], he stated that the Mai-taki mushroom originally believed to be warai-taki as ō -warai-taki may well have been the "Big Orange Laughing Mushroom" now recognized as ō -warai-taki, a species of Gymnopilus.

It is really strange that Dr. Wasson failed to recall the mushroom in Mr. McKenney's letter said Stropharia and it grew in dung and resembled the Roger Heim Illustration in Life Magazine.

mjshroomer