Mushrooms are gay, right? I feel like this is a widely acknowledged truth, but has been sorely lacking documented evidence, until now!
We’re getting to that time of year when many of us gather with family and other people we don’t want to be stuck around a dinner table with, looking for awkward topics to argue about. Why not gay mushrooms? With this extremely scientific list, you will be equipped to win any mycological debate in your household! Feel free to chime in in the comments with your fave queer fungi!
Amethyst Deceiver (Laccaria amethystina)
Photo by Richard Heathcote/Getty Images
It sounds like a queer-coded Batman villain. It is bright purple. This mushroom is deceiving absolutely no one about its extreme homosexuality.
Veiled Lady (Phallus indusiatus)
Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images
Found in abundance on 19th century beaches, staring at each other with barely repressed sapphic longing.
Wood Blewit (Clitocybe nuda)
With hues from blue to pink to purple, it would be easy to declare this to be a bisexual mushroom. So I’m going to do exactly that. Also, both its common and Latin names are gently evocative of sex acts across genders, which is surely a win for bi visibility.
Witch’s Butter (Dacrymyces palmatus)
Witches are gay, butter is gay (especially if it’s nut). In Eastern European legend, having this fungus appear on your house meant you’d been cursed by a witch. Curses are gay, too!
Giant Puffball (Calvatia gigantea)
Photo by: Arterra/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
This puffball reclaimed all the gay slurs thrown at it in the playground, joined a gym and now works security at the gay forest.
Ghost Fungus (Omphalotus nidiformis)
You partied all night with this club kid and never heard from them again. Your friends will be very patient during the three years you spend obsessing over this.
Schizophyllum commune
If you thought you were winning at defying the gender binary, think again – this beauty apparently has over 23,000 sexes. That’s a different one every day for 63 years!
Violet Coral Mushroom (Clavaria zollingeri)
Probably there are many naturally occurring sex toys, but this is the only one that is the correct shade of Sex Toy Pink.
Cryptococcus gattii
According to cishet reporting, this fungus caused an infection outbreak because of gay sex, conveniently forgetting all the destruction straight fungus has wrought on the world. Homophobic!
Lion’s Mane Mushroom (Hericium erinaceus)
This mushroom was last seen in a lesbian club circa 2006 wearing a vest and skinny tie.
The queer mushroom content I didn’t know I needed until I read this!
Also, the fact that this is published under House & Garden made me giggle snort.
“You Cannot Kill Me in A Way That Matters” is mycologicaly queer to me. I love this piece!
I know that slime molds aren’t *technically* mushrooms, but I would still like to make a contribution to this already fantastic list:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/17/the-blob-zoo-unveils-baffling-new-organism-with-720-sexes
Yikes! But fascinating! Thank you!
This is some great content. Which ones are edible though & won’t cause problems?
Like lesbians, all of them are EDIBLE, but also like lesbians, some of them will be hard to deal with after you eat them.
If you do want to forage mushrooms, get a good mushroom handbook or two or three and really learn to ID them. Better yet, find your local mushroom club and make some friends!
DO NOT just go off a picture on the web. Good edible mushrooms often have look-alikes, and at least one of these mushrooms can seriously upset your digestive system.
That said, I’ve occasionally seen Lion’s Mane in my local food co-op and it is very edible.
Always do your own research and consult an expert before eating foraged fungi. THAT BEING SAID, giant puffball is edible, and is one of the few edible mushrooms with no lookalikes, poisonous or otherwise. This was my first foraged mushroom, I found it on the bike path and biked a mile back to my car cradling a beachball sized fungus like a baby, it was a peak gay moment.
My childhood obsession with the giant puffballs growing in my backyard makes so much more sense now
I snorted in laughter reading the giant puffball description🤣 thanks so much for writing❤️
Amazing! I will happily share photos of queer mushrooms with family any day
This was absolutely the perfect way to say good night to the internet on Election Night 2022. Good night, Internet!
The Ballerina Waxcap and the Ink Cap are in a pink girl/goth girl relationship.
The Destroying Angel is incredibly beautiful and alluring and deadly much like a biblically accurate angel and also like queer femmes.
The King Trumpet mushroom is trans masc.
Turkey Tails are plaid butches.
I don’t make the rules.
Schizophyllum commune is giving big genderqueer energy- “don’t talk to me or my 23,000 sexes until you’ve had a nice long think about cisnormativity”
Thanks for this wonderful content. It made me think of my gay friend V. who dressed up as a poisonous mushroom for halloween – the red one with white dots. They wanted to be very scary , poisonous and dangerous aka a mushroom you only eat once but instead were super cute and funny and talkative :)
Fungi are the ultimate queer entities, being neither animal or plant…to me as an enby they sum up being non binary to perfection. Add in the fact they are mysterious, aesthetically stunning, & possibly delicious, mind bending, or poisonous & you have a multitude of gayness!
My personal favourite is the Entoloma hochstetteri, which is native to New Zealand, I saw it there in 2007. Tiny, bright blue, & cute AF. I think it is a transmasc mushroom…
My god. I can’t contain my love for this.
oh god this is the kind of article that makes me love autostraddle SO deeply
All of these gay mushrooms are beautiful and valid, but now I want to learn more especially about Schizophyllum commune and their 23,000 sexes.
Nature can never be fully explored. Let’s slowly feel it. bloxorz
Gay Mushrooms look significantly different from typical mushrooms in terms of shape and color ovo game.
Known as the “Laughing Gym” or “magic tiles 3,” possibly due to its hallucinogenic properties.
Your content is a treasure trove; thanks for the share.