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ARE POWERFUL PSYCHEDELICS FLOURISHING IN YOUR GARDEN?

Thursday, April 28, 2022

In today’s newsletter, we root out the mulch-mushroom connection, discover the most dangerous books in the library, find out why some spiders ditch their mates in a hurry … and learn a simple way to save trees.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY MICHAEL CHRISTOPHER BROWN

Powerful psychedelic mushrooms may be growing in your yard. How did they get there?

It turns out that webs of white mycelium flourish amid wood chips. Like rats, pigeons, and cockroaches, these most potent of psychedelics not only survive but thrive in urban and suburban environments that are filled with mulch beds.

The mycelium is inside some of the wood chips bought in the Pacific Northwest and perhaps farther afield, Nat Geo reports. One chemist and fungi forager isn’t surprised. “It’s fascinating,” says Jordan Jacobs, “that a psychoactive mushroom that has potential long-lasting effects on human consciousness has decided that this ecological niche suits it well.”

Read the full story here.

Pictured at top, a gardener displays three types of potent psychedelic mushrooms found in back yards and gardens. Above, chemist Jordan Jacobs shows a fellow forager Psilocybe ovoideocystidiata in a small park near Bellevue, Washington.

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PHOTO OF THE DAY

PHOTOGRAPH BY CHARLIE HAMILTON JAMES, @CHAMILTONJAMES

Hello, Dali! Usually, photographer and Nat Geo Explorer Charlie Hamilton James is doing the looking. But on this day in Peru’s Manú National Park, a young giant otter sized up the photographer as well. The otter, known by researchers as Dali, was hunting with his family on an oxbow lake that borders the Manú River. Fun fact: giant otters require up to nine pounds of fish a day.

STORIES WE’RE FOLLOWING

PHOTOGRAPH BY REBECCA HALE, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

These emerald-green books are poisonous—and may be on a shelf near you

This nation reverses colonial damage, shows simple way to preserve trees

Microplastics are in our bodies. Are they harmful?

China is using a geese patrol to uphold its zero-COVID policy

Three-legged dog battling cancer rescues baby otter from Minnesota river

The mummies you’ve never heard of

EARTH MONTH: ARTICLE OF THE DAY

PHOTOGRAPH BY DAVID DOUBILET

IN THE SPOTLIGHT

PHOTOGRAPHS BY KHOLOOD EID

Fish migration: Climate change could affect the way we eat. Rivers and lakes are warming, causing fish and other freshwater vertebrates to go extinct faster than land vertebrates. Clint Muhlfeld (above right), an ecologist who studies westslope cutthroat trout in Montana’s Flathead River, says that climate change is helping rainbow trout move upstream and hybridize with the native cutthroat (above left). In the hybrids, “you see a dramatic decline in fitness,” he says. “So that’s a major concern.”

SUBSCRIBER EXCLUSIVE

IN A FEW WORDS

QUOTE

Somebody is finding a new dinosaur species on average once a week. And we’re finding more right now than we ever have before.

Paleontologist, Nat Geo Explorer

Read more: Stunning Scottish pterosaur is biggest fossil of its kind

THE LAST GLIMPSE

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF SHICHANG ZHANG

Leaving so soon? This group of male spiders aren’t sticking around for dinner. In one species of tiny orb-weaving spider, males launched into the air after mating to flee cannibal females who might find them easier to catch than other prey. Scientists who observed this unusual behavior reported that all the male spiders who “catapulted” to escape sexual cannibalism survived. (Pictured above, a male Philoponella prominens, at right, mates with a female in a lab.)

Related: For these horseshoe crabs, too, love is a battlefield

THE MATING GAME

This newsletter was curated and edited by David Beard, Jen Tse, and Monica Williams. Do you have an idea or feedback? Let us know at [email protected]. Thanks for reading!

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