5. Amanita Muscaria The Fruit of the Trees of Life

All mushrooms are the fruit of a fungus and contain microscopic seeds called spores. Just as an apple bears no resemblance to the tree that grew it, a mushroom bears no resemblance to the fungus that grew it.

Fungi are a distinct branch on the biological tree of life, being neither Plant nor Animal but their own unique type of life form. Fungi are somewhat similar to animal life in that, both Animals and Fungi must find and burn food (carbohydrates) for life energy using oxygen and producing carbon dioxide, unlike green plants, which through photosynthesis can make their own food from water, carbon dioxide and light.

The Fungi are divided in to two broad categories, “Fungi Imperfecti” the simple fungi; yeasts, smuts, rusts, and molds like bread mold, penicillin mold etc. and the “Fungi Perfecti” the mushrooms etc. This division is based on how the Fungi produce and distribute their spores. The Imperfect fungi reproduce by budding (yeasts), or by using simple spore bearing structures to produce their spores and their reproduction usually involves no genetic mixing.

The Perfect fungi instead create mushrooms or other advanced structures to produce and distribute their spores, which are part of a fairly complicated nonsexual type of reproduction involving genetic mixing, which we won’t go into here. However many higher fungi can and do make spore bearing structures similar to simple fungi and release spores by this method also.

All Perfect fungi are composed of thread like cells (mycelium) joined end to end and usually can only be seen by the naked human eye when in mass. The tiniest piece of a mushroom fungus, even a single cell of mycelium, can grow into a complete full sized fungus.

Many fungi are Mycorhiza which literally means fungus + root; and have a symbiotic relationship with a green plant; modern research has shown that approximately 95% of all the green plant species on earth each depend on one or more Mycorhiza fungi species to survive! The Mycorhiza Fungi supply their plant partner with water, nutrients and very importantly antibiotics, since green plants have no immune system of their own; in return the plant feeds the fungus carbohydrates.

Many Fungi manufacture and secrete chemicals that are very strong antibiotics; in fact almost all of modern Medicine’s antibiotics were first discovered in Fungi.

Perfect Fungi have a unique ability to transport several times their body weight of water through their mycelium per day and it is possible for dried Fungi mycelium and dried mushrooms, to absorb water, and return to life after being completely dried for long periods of time.

Since a living fungus needs to eat; and it has to grow to obtain its food, many Fungi are capable of extremely fast growth of their mycelium. It has been estimated that a healthy mushroom culture growing on grain in a quart jar can grow new mycelium at the rate of 1 kilometer (6/10 of a mile) per 24 hours.

In the case of mushrooms the fruiting body is capable of an almost explosive growth, for example an Amanita Muscaria mushroom can grow from a little egg smaller than a golf ball to a specimen 10 inches high and 8 inches across the cap in just a few days.

The spores of many Imperfect and Perfect Fungi are capable of circling the globe on the wind and are resistant to extremely high altitude, radiation, cold, heat, and many corrosive chemicals. As a class Fungi are some of the hardiest life forms on the planet and in a very real sense they are Immortal when compared to higher plant and animal life.

An individual Amanita Muscaria fungus can be a huge organism that penetrates acres of ground, is symbiotic with hundreds of trees, weighs multiple tons, and with a possible lifespan measured in thousands of years.

Amanita Muscaria is a Mycorhiza fungus that lives in a symbiotic relationship with certain tree families like Pine, Spruce, Hemlock, Fir, Larch, Birch, Beech, Maple, Poplar, Alder, Hazel, Olive and others. The Amanita Muscaria fungus provides their trees with water, nutrients, and antibiotics in return the fungi are fed by the tree with carbohydrates and fallen debris such as leaves, needles, twigs etc…

Only with suitable symbiotic trees will the Amanita Muscaria fungus fruit and produce its mushrooms. This very special relationship of Amanita Muscaria with these particular trees was noticed anciently and led to the idea of the Tree or Trees of Life that produced the magical Fruit of the Tree of Life. This ancient Fruit of the Tree of Life concept is spread all over Eurasia and is also found in the Genesis story of the Old Testament Bible.

It is interesting that many of the Trees of Life actually named in Eurasian mythology are tree species that do not produce any edible fruit of their own, yet are symbiotic with Amanita Muscaria, which shows that Amanita Muscaria is the true “Fruit of the Tree of Life” in these ancient legends.