Greg Mueller has studied mushrooms for 30 years. One of his favorite hangouts is the Plants of the World exhibit at Chicago’s Field Museum, where he is curator of mycology. There, lifelike models depict the stunning diversity of fungi. An expert in identification, Mueller spends much of his time determining which mushroom species made someone sick.
Back in the days of Caesar they had mushroom tasters. Now there’s a job for you, huh? If the tasters lived, then Caesar would eat the mushrooms.
In the mid-1860s, an ex–Army captain named Charles McIlvaine decided that he would spend his retirement tasting mushrooms. He wanted to judge his body’s reaction to the mushrooms he tasted, so he didn’t try them within a day or two of each other. He kept voluminous notes. He ended up writing a book called One Thousand American Fungi. What he learned has stood the test of time—although ...
