Mushroom

Mushroom (pronounced muhsh-room)

(1) Any of various fleshy fungi including the toadstools, puffballs, coral fungi, morels etc; any of several edible species, especially of the family Agaricaceae, as Agaricus campestris meadow mushroom, or field mushroom, cultivated for food in many places.

(2) A fungus producing such fruiting bodies.

(3) Anything of similar shape or correspondingly rapid growth.

(4) As ellipsis of “mushroom cloud”, a large, mushroom-shaped cloud of smoke or rubble, formed in the atmosphere as a result of an explosion (or other sudden release of energy), especially a nuclear explosion.

(5) Of, consisting of, or containing mushrooms.

(6) Resembling a mushroom in shape or form; to have or assume the shape of a mushroom.

(7) Of rapid growth and often brief duration (to spread, grow, or develop quickly).

(8) To gather mushrooms (typically as “mushrooming”, practiced by a mushroomer).

(9) As “magic mushroom” (used typically in the plural), any mushroomlike fungus that after ingestion induces psychedelic effects (“shrooms” to users, “psilocybin mushroom” to clinicians in some jurisdictions where prescription is now lawful).

(10) In ballistics (of a bullet), to form the shape of a mushroom when striking a soft target.

(11) In bar billiards, any of the mushroom-shaped pegs.

(12) In architecture, a concrete column with a thickened portion at the top, used to support a slab.

(13) In slang, an individual who rises rapidly from obscurity or poverty (now rare and displaced by “upstart”); the figurative sense of something that grows very quickly or seems to appear suddenly remains in use.

1350–1400: Following the usual conventions in English, it may be expected the construct was mush- + -room but those words wholly are unrelated and the ultimate source is unknown.  Mushroom was an alteration (by folk etymology) of the Middle English muscheron & musseroun, from the eleventh century Middle French mousseron, from the Anglo-Norman musherum & moscheron, from the Old French moisseron, from the Late Latin mussiriōn- (stem of mussiriō).  The Old French word had a murky history and etymologists suspect it was from the Old French mosse & moise (moss (from which modern French gained mousse (on the basis of the first known use being of a type of fungus which grows in moss))), from the Frankish mosu (moss) or the Old Dutch mosa (moss).  The Old French was akin to the Old High German mosa (moor, swamp), the Old High German mos (moss, bog) & mios (moss, mire), the Old English mēos (moss) & mōs (bog, marsh), the Old Norse mosi (moss) & myrr (bog, mire), all from the Proto-Germanic musą, muso & miuziz (mosses, bog), from the primitive Indo- European mews- (mosses, mold, mildew).  It displaced the native Old English swamm.  The clipping shroom is a synonym (most popular with users of magic mushrooms) and the spelling mushrump is long obsolete (the modern spelling more or less standardized by the 1560s).  Mushroom is a noun, adjective & verb, mushroomed is a verb, mushrooming is a noun & verb, mushroomer is a noun, mushroomic, mushroomless, mushroomlike, mushroomoid & mushroomy are adjectives; the noun plural is mushrooms.

Lindsay Lohan's mushroom gravy.

Ingredients

3 tablespoons olive oil or butter
3 cups thinly sliced baby portabella mushrooms or white button mushrooms
½ cup finely chopped onion
1-2 cloves garlic, minced
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour or cup for cup gluten-free flour
3 cups beef broth/stock or vegetable stock
Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

(1) In a large skillet, heat oil over medium-high heat.  Sautee mushrooms and onions until they are nicely browned (should take around 7 minutes).  Add in garlic and stir until fragrant (about 30 seconds).

(2) Stir in the flour and cook for 1 minute.  Whisk in the broth, remembering to scrape from the bottom of pan all the "browned bits" (the best part).  Reduce to a simmer and simmer until thickened, then remove from heat.  Taste for salt and pepper and season to taste.

The alternative etymology (noting the Ancient Greek μύκης (múkēs) (mushroom) suggests the Old French may be of pre-Roman origin and it remains a matter of debate among etymologists (almost all lexicographers stick to “of uncertain origin”).  What is agreed is the noun “mushroom” was at first applied to almost any of the larger fungi but later to the agaricoid fungi (especially the edible varieties).  The figurative use for something or someone that makes a sudden appearance in full form dates from the 1590s; it was applied especially an upstart person (bounder) or family (those who rose rapidly from a low station in life).  All that was based on the mushroom’s impressively rapid rate of growth and by the 1740s the figurative use substantially has lost the “upstart” sense and came to be used generally of “expanding or increasing rapidly; to rise suddenly in position or rank”.  The famous (or infamous) “mushroom cloud” was first widely described in 1916 (World War I (1914-1918) a time & place of big explosions witnessed by many with cameras) but the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) cites the first use as dating from US in 1902.  It thus long pre-dates the nuclear-age but the phenomenon would for millennia (long before there were explosives) have been observed by those watching volcanic eruptions.  After photographs of the immediate aftermath of the A-bombing of Hiroshima & Nagasaki (August 1945) widely were publicized, the term became popular and spread to many aspects of popular culture including film, art and T-shirts.

Germania, Berlin’s sandy soil and the “mushroom” used to test for sinkage

Germania model, circa 1940.  The scale of the buildings was monumental and Speer was aware of the comparisons with the Rome and Athens of Antiquity, even writing (a not wholly original) “Theory of Ruin Value” arguing the importance of designs that might, thousands of years hence, leave “magnificent ruins”.

Until in the twenty-first century the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) began doing things at a scale once thought unsustainable, the urban-redevelopment plan imagined on a grandest scale was that for Berlin designed by Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945).  What was the be the capital of the Third Reich (and, in the minds of the most delusional of the Nazis: “of the world”) would be renamed Germania and, as Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) told Speer’s wife: “Your husband is going to build buildings for me the likes of which haven't been built for 4,000 years.”  Prone to lies and exaggeration, this was one of the occasions the Führer was being truthful and although there was little the plans for Germania that was original, what was impressive was the scale, Speer taking reference points from architectural history (the Pantheon in Rome, the Arc de Triomphe in Paris) and making the German versions bigger.  Although at the time much taken with what he called the regime’s “Empire style”, in his (sometimes reliable) post-war memoirs (Erinnerungen (Memories or Reminiscences) and published in English as Inside the Third Reich (1969)) he admitted the stylistic failure, above all because the architecture wholly was disconnected from the human scale.

The mushroom, Speer's improbable architectural legacy.

Of all that Speer planned for Hitler's megalomaniacal vision of Germania, only small fragments remain but the strangest and largest relic is the Schwerbelastungskörper (heavy load-bearing body) a concrete structure 30 metres (100 feet) tall and weighing 12,650 tons (11,476 tonnes); locals nicknamed it der Pilz (the mushroom).  Located on the city’s southern edge (near modern day Südkreuz station), the giant concrete cylinder was in 1941 erected to test the suitability of Berlin’s sandy soil, something of great significance because most of Germania’s large, representational buildings would be constructed from granite, concrete & steel; although structural engineers could solve the challenges the architects designs presented, the only way to be certain the soil could handle such weight was to conduct a practical, real-time, full-size experiment.  While the data were required for much of what was planned, of particular interest was intended landmark of the Victory Arch which, at 117 metres (384 feet) tall and 170 metres (558 feet) wide would obviously exert much pressure and, having the foundations sinking into the sandy soil was less than ideal.  With a footprint of exactly 100 m³, Speer’s giant, reinforced concrete “mushroom” was placed in a way that would as closely as possible emulate the forces involved; it sat 18 metres (60 feet) deep with the above-ground extending 14 metres (46 feet) high while inside there were a number of measuring devices recording movement.  As things transpired the instruments recorded sinking between 110-180 mm (4.3-7.1 inches) across the six measuring points and that was well beyond the 60 mm (2.4 inches) deemed by Speer as the upper limit of acceptability.  Whether the findings would have compelled a change to the arch or indeed any of Germania’s other gargantuan designs will never be known because, as the tide of war turned, the resources devoted to the project were re-allocated to more urgent tasks and by 1943 Speer, by then also minister of armaments and war production, quietly shut-down the Germania planning office.  So little was built and less survived but the “mushroom” remained and is now a tourist attraction and a site visited by many organized tours.

The mushroom cloud

Tsar Bomba, the largest ever nuclear test, detonated by the Soviet Union in October 1961.

As the photographs suggest, the mushroom clouds generated by large volcanic eruptions and the detonation of nuclear weapons can look similar because the same atmospheric physics are operating despite the underlying energy-release mechanisms being completely different and, counterintuitively, there is no precise TNT (abbreviation of trinitrotoluene (an explosive substance used in blasting)) equivalent threshold above which every explosion produces a mushroom cloud. A mushroom cloud is principally a consequence of buoyancy and atmospheric fluid dynamics, rather than merely a product of energy released, thus the phenomenon can occur with nuclear explosions, large conventional explosions, volcanic eruptions and even especially intense fires.  What an explosion does is produce a very hot, rapidly expanding mass of gas and entrained material and this rises because the air above has less resistance than the ground below; it rises because it has acquired enormous upward momentum and, as it rises, it entrains surrounding air.  The most important mechanism in the ultimate generation of a mushroom cloud’s distinctive shape is a phenomenon plasma physicists call “thermal buoyancy”.

Physics of a mushroom cloud (left), the fluid dynamics an interplay of energy, matter & air temperature and a mushroom cloud T-shirt (right), the images used sometimes for political messaging and sometimes just for dramatic effect. 

Fernando Famiani's photograph of the eruption of Mt Etna, Sicily, Italy, December 2015, shot from the outskirts of the village of San Teodora.

Familiar from many conditions in climate science, as hot material rises, the heated gas being less dense than the surrounding atmosphere, the rising plume entrains cooler air, increasing its volume while reducing its average temperature, a process that continues until its density approaches that of the surrounding atmosphere at which point, the rising material spreads laterally, producing the mushroom cloud’s characteristic “cap”, the outer regions circulating downwards, maintain the shape of the stem.  There are scaling relationships between explosion energy and the size, height and evolution of the resulting plume and consequently, as a general principle, as explosions become larger, a mushroom cloud becomes increasingly likely under appropriate atmospheric conditions.  So the mushroom cloud is a product of the environment; the same release of energy in different conditions (an explosion deep underground; a large underwater explosion; an explosion in a confined structure; energy released over a sufficiently long period rather than instantaneously) will tend not to create one whereas a relatively modest release of energy can produce one if the geometry and atmospheric conditions are favourable.  So, a mushroom cloud is a thing not of yield but of atmospheric conditions.

Death cap mushrooms.

In 2023, Australian mother of two Erin Patterson (b 1974) murdered three of her relatives and nearly killed a fourth by preparing for them a lunch of Beef Wellingtons laced with highly toxic death cap mushrooms.  Amanita phalloides (the more evocative “death cap” the common name) is a basidiomycete fungus and mushroom (one of many in the genus Amanita) and although originally from Europe, it has spread around the planet as have many species (zoological & botanical) in the age of mass-movement of people and goods.  Dangerously, the death cap closely resembles a number of (variously bland and delicious) edible mushrooms used in many dishes so mushroomers must take care when mushrooming (harvesting wild mushrooms).  They’re the most poisonous of all known mushrooms and a single example contains enough toxin to kill an adult human; unsurprisingly, death caps are estimated to be responsible for as many as 90% of the annual death-toll from eating toxic mushrooms.  Quite what is the extent of the annual loss of life is uncertain because in rural parts of Asia (where foraged mushrooms are common in diets) the statistics are not reliable but it’s believed the numbers bounce-around between 100-300.  The principal toxic constituent (hardly affected by cooking or freezing) is α-Amanitin which causes liver and kidney failure.

Erin Patterson, prior to charges being laid.

It was severe liver failure that was the cause of the death of Erin Patterson’s three victims, all of whom died within a week of falling ill (despite one receiving a liver transplant); the sole survivor recovered after several weeks of treatment.  The trial was conducted before a jury that delivered a guilty verdict on all three charges and the judge handed down a sentence of life imprisonment with a non-parole period of 33 years; there was immense international interest in the case and it was the first sentencing hearing in the state of Victoria to be live-streamed.  In what was anyway a macabre tale, one interesting aspect was the way Erin Patterson chose to learn about the nature of the death cap; some will have drawn the conclusion: “When researching murder-methods, don’t use one’s own digital devices.”  The case currently is on appeal, the defense seeking a retrial on several procedural and technical grounds while the state is arguing the sentence was “manifestly inadequate” and there should be no possibility of parole.  On X (formerly known as Twitter), some were even more unforgiving, suggesting: “She should get the chair.”

Cryptic crochet: Erin Patterson crocheted a rat as a gift for her defense counsel.  According to press reports, it was an expression of “thanks” but a crocheted mushroom would have been a nice touch.

In her cell, “mushroom lady” (the public's choice of dub upon the case being publicized) is said to pass the hours crocheting, an intricate, time-consuming business but for those serving long prison sentences, time is relative in a way different to that made famous by Albert Einstein (1879-1955) and for the seven Nazis incarcerated in Spandau prison after the first Nuremberg Trial (1945-1946), “time” often came up in their sometimes awkward conversations.  Grand Admiral Erich Raeder (1876–1960; head of the German Navy 1928-1943) served as prison librarian and, responding to a complaint from one of his fellow inmates that his handing out the four permitted (and by 1954 uncensored) newspapers (one selected by each of the powers administering the prison (France (Kurier), the UK (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung), US (Die Welt) & USSR (Berliner Zeitung) bound in one folder meant “It will take too long for one person to read all four newspapers”, answered “That doesn't matter. You've got plenty of time, after all.”  Despite that uncompromising start, within two days the admiral relented, averting the threat of mutiny by distributing the papers singularly. 

Ozempic: The famous “fat jab”.  Now on GLP-1 fat jabs, hopefully the prison authorities will permit her (once slender) to create content and open an OnlyFans page with proceeds going to the families of her victims.

One unexpected coda to the trial was the announcement mushroom lady has been granted access to taxpayer-funded Ozempic (a GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide-1) appetite suppressant), the official explanation being her inability to pursue an exercise regime while in solitary confinement; because of the nature of her offences, it's expected she'll remain in solitary confinement for the foreseeable future (33 years presumably within the vista of “foreseeable”).  Unfortunately, her previous exercise techniques were not disclosed, something that would have been of interest to many pursuing weight-loss.  Doubtlessly anticipating some public outrage at the thought taxpayers would be footing the bill for mushroom lady to get free “fat jabs”, a spokesperson for Victoria’s Department of Justice issued a statement confirming weight loss drugs were just another medicine and would be provided to prisoners based on a clinician's advice: “Prescriptions are only given by clinicians when there’s a clear medical need - like preventing serious conditions such as type 2 diabetes.  Access to prescribed weight loss medication was introduced in response to recommendations from the Coroner following a death in custody linked to obesity.”  The convicted mass-murderer had told the court she “had a problem” with body image and binge-eating, a perhaps unnecessary confirmation given some of the photographs circulated by the media.