However, the Jack O’Lantern is now considered to be one of the mushrooms most often implicated in poisoning. Jack O’Lantern mushrooms can look like Chanterelles when on the ground Miller of Indiana who testifies that “I have several times eaten of it without other than pleasurable sensations.” His description concerning the Jack O’Lantern is that “strong stomachs can retain a meal of them” and that the taste is “rather saponaceous” which is to say soapy. According to Tom Volk, the noted mycologist from the University of Wisconsin, “ Omphalotus olearius won’t kill you – it will just make you wish you were dead.” However, Charles McIlvane tells a different story in One Thousand American Fungi, which was originally published in 1900 and was for many years the preeminent North American reference it has a stated raison d’être for the promotion of eating toadstools (in McIlvane’s words). It is not likely that the Jack O’Lantern would have helped the sailor very much, as they are widely, though not universally, listed as poisonous the most commonly listed symptoms are vomiting and diarrhea for several days after ingestion. The more creative if outré David Aurora tells the tale in Mushrooms Demystified of a shipwrecked sailor who wrote his last message with the light from a jack-o-lantern using the ink from a shaggy mane and a pen made from an agaric, only to die of starvation because he was afraid to eat the mushrooms, certainly an apocryphal fabrication. Bill Russell in the Field Guide to Wild Mushrooms of the Mid-Atlantic proffers that the glow can be sustained by storing the mushrooms in a paper bag in the refrigerator to retain the moisture and reduce the oxidation rate during the day and bringing them out for a light show at night. In The Complete Mushroom Hunter, Gary Lincoff states that the “light can be so bright that you can read a newspaper” and that they have been used to mark a path in the woods at night. Michael Kuo () declared the illumination as the “largest and most insidious conspiracy in the mycological world,” though he subsequently issued a corrigendum that the degree of light was dependent on whether the mushroom was kept moist after picking. If you pick a young mushroom and observe it in a very dark place, the gills will glow with a faint green hue. The quantity and quality of its light is highly subjective to the age and habitat of the mushroom, to the mode of storage if picked and to the time and location of light observation. illudens known as bioluminescence is its most well-known and most controversial feature. Potpourri: The jack-o-lantern-like glow of O. The specific name is likely from the Latin illudere, to mock or jeer, which is taken to mean deception in similar fashion to its association as the root word for illusion. Scientific Name – Omphalotus illudens The generic name is from the Greek omphalos which means navel, probably in reference to the long, tapering, umbilical stem. It refers here to the fact that the mushroom glows in the dark. It is synonymous with ignis fatuus (Latin for ‘foolish fire’), one of the names for the luminous swamp gas sometimes called ‘will-o’-the-wisp.’ The name is more prominently associated with the carved and illuminated Halloween pumpkin.
illudens known as bioluminescence is its most well-known and most controversial feature.Ĭommon Name: Jack O’Lantern, False Chanterelle – The term Jack O’Lantern is an obsolete term for a man with a lantern – a night watchman.
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