Lessons in Prejudice
This might be a stretch, but I have discovered a hidden prejudice.
I’m not being too hard on myself for it though. We have all been inundated with this bias for eons. Not that a history of being misinformed excuses racism or anything.
But this is a black vs. white thing.
I know the bad guy is usually on the black horse and the good guy on a bright white steed. I know black cats are supposedly scary and bad luck. I also know the black dogs in an animal shelter are the last to be adopted. Oh, and supposedly we all have this dark side and we need to be sharing more light in the world.
What the hell is all that anyway? Where did it come from?
I’m sure someone out there knows way more about all this than I and this is not really a post about the archetypes in history anyway.
It’s about Mushrooms.
I don’t really know anything about mushrooms…except that I will enjoy them in a salad or sometimes even sauté them in butter and they are yummy. But what isn’t yummy when sautéed in butter, right? But that is the extent of my knowledge. (I know, I know, I came of age in the 1960’s in California so I should at least know about “Shrooms”, right? I just never went there…)
But on my daily walks, I recently spotted some of these fungi growing and started photographing them. I found quite a variety, including some cute little patches that reminded me somehow of tiny fairy villages…or families.
There were a lot of different kinds, shapes, sizes and colors. I do live in the Pacific Northwest after all and it is seriously WET up here.
All of these were so interesting…their patterns of growth, their shape, size, and their similar but different hues. I’m probably passing up some fancy truffles or something, but I also know some mushrooms can be toxic. I have no idea how to identify those, so I just left them ALL alone for whatever creature eats them in the wild of my suburban neighborhood.
Then I spotted these, right in my own yard.
They literally popped up overnight and gave me the creeps when I bent down to snap a picture with my phone. They just LOOK evil…like they could reach up and grab me, or spit blinding venom in my eyes or something.
Even if someone told me these mushrooms were an extremely sought-after delicacy, I think I’d rather eat a snake than go near these things again. I’m afraid to even remove them. They might release deadly spores into the air.
They are scary looking…especially because they are black, not a clean white or a warm, enticing golden color…you know, how mushrooms are supposed to look.
I purposely did not Google (yes, it is now officially a VERB) mushrooms before I wrote this because I didn’t want to influence my initial reaction. I finally tried Wikipedia, Googles Reverse Image, etc., etc. But I never found my new arrivals. James says they look like they are from Mordor.
I did find this one interesting site.
http://mushroaming.com/Pacific_Northwest
I could not find this dark thing anywhere and it grows right in my front yard!
But again, this whole thing does NOT have me wondering about gourmet VS toxic food.
It has me thinking about Black VS White…..
Those black mushrooms are extremely scary looking! They look like they have faces! I’m glad you left them alone, as you never know what might happen.
If it makes you feel any better, some of the deadliest are orange or golden…fly agarics and deathcup amanitas, for instance.
Color is such an interesting phenomenon to me. For exmple I don’t see these ‘shrooms’ as being black. I see deep dark purples made with hues of blue and red blending on the light spectrum. Their shapes conjur up images of bats and vampires, night creatures and give me the creeps. ‘Black’ crows are similar in as much as when the sun catches them at a certain angle one can see the blues and reds in their feathers.
I wonder if the belief of black being evil comes from fear of darkness, the absence of light and spirits that might inhabit that space. The absence of light in the underworld.
Yes, no doubt. I just can’t believe I was (am) afraid of a dang mushroom because of it’s color. As someone else pointed out the orange or golden ones are deadly! Always learning…for that I am grateful.
I so don’t get mushrooms. They are fun to discover and interesting odd creatures but eat? Rarely. With the exception of the orange pine mushroom. Found growing under pine trees from early Autumn and tasty with potato’s and sauce. But Exe……….Cheers,H
I’ve never seen anything like it. They are scary. I don’t eat any mushrooms that I see growing either. I did eat some last year that a friend gave me from her yard. She had found out they were a delicacy. I figured since she and other friends didn’t get sick I wouldn’t either. They were good. But I still wouldn’t eat anything I found.