PHOTO: Magic Mushrooms in Queen Elizabeth’s Garden at Buckingham Palace

There are magic mushrooms found in Queen Elizabeth’s garden at Buckingham Palace, said celebrity gardener Alan Titchmarsh, who spotted them.

The Amanita muscaria — commonly known as fly agaric, or fly amanita, is a bright red-and-white mushroom, and the fungus is psychoactive when consumed.

Although it is generally considered poisonous, reports of human deaths resulting from eating the mushroom are extremely rare. After parboiling—which removes the mushroom’s psychoactive substances—it is eaten in parts of Europe, Asia, and North America. Amanita muscaria is noted for its hallucinogenic properties, with its main psychoactive constituent being the compound muscimol. The mushroom was used as an intoxicant and entheogen by the peoples of Siberia, and has a religious significance in these cultures. There has been much speculation on possible traditional use of this mushroom as an intoxicant in places other than Siberia, such as the Middle East, India, Eurasia, North America, and Scandinavia. The American banker and amateur ethnomycologist R. Gordon Wasson proposed that the fly agaric was the soma of the ancient Rig Veda texts of India; since its introduction in 1968, this theory has gained both followers and detractors in anthropological literature.

The Dead Sea Scrolls scholar John Marco Allegro also proposed that early Christianity sprang from cultic use of the fly agaric in Second Temple Judaism, and that the mushroom itself was used by the Essenes as an allegory for Jesus Christ.

The Amanita Muscaria. Credit: USGS