Aphrodisiology

October 2, 2008 11:54 PM

Video of Dictyophora Indusiata. "When they find it, they sniff it. The scent of this mushroom causes sexual arousal, often to the point of orgasm." ^ Other interesting articles available from Aphrodisiology: List of Aphrodisiacs l Visual Stimuli l Pheromones & Perfumes.

The Dictyophora Indusiata is a type of morel. (This site has great pics of mushrooms)

This mushroom is also known as "Basket stinkhorn (Dictyophora Indusiata), a tropical stinkhorn fungus with a lacy, netlike veil (indusium) that hangs down from the cap (head)." It's also known as Phallus indusiatus or bamboo pith.

A recipe for cooking Dictyophora Indusiata from the Institute for the Advancement of the Science and Art of Chinese Cooking.

Information about the Dictyophora Indusiata from the International Journal of Medicinal Mushrooms

posted by nickyskye (49 comments total)

"It's no coincidence that the spelling for the genus Phallus looks like the word phallus, which is Latin for dick."

QFT. This is the new catchphrase, everybody.

I left some fresh strawberries in the refridgerator, which is Latin for dick.

My mom gets really fatigued by post-debate punditry, which is Latin for dick.

Who left this eggbeater, which is Latin for dick, in my sock drawer?

It's time to start drilling; drill, drill, drill, drill, which is Latin for dick.
posted by breath at 12:29 AM on October 3, 2008 [8 favorites]

hmmm. dickbreath.
posted by isopraxis at 12:37 AM on October 3, 2008

Its latin for dickbreath.
posted by isopraxis at 12:38 AM on October 3, 2008

Badger, Badger, Badger, Mushroom, MUSHROOOOOOOO-ooohhh God.
posted by Ritchie at 1:04 AM on October 3, 2008 [4 favorites]

Just in case people aren't reading, this is the gist of the second link:

An article in the International Journal of Medicinal Mushrooms describes a strange and wonderful practice in Hawaii: women gather together to search for a particular mushroom. When they find it, they sniff it. The scent of this mushroom causes sexual arousal, often to the point of orgasm.

The article describes a trial where 20 men and 16 women were asked to smell the mushroom. All of the men found the smell disgusting. All the women showed signs of arousal, and six experienced orgasm from the smell. The study noted that the women who did climax were the first women to smell it, while those who smelled it later (when it was older and weaker) noticed fewer effects.

One woman said she wanted to "gobble it up."

But that was a 2001 paper. If these results were reproducible (women having oragasms from sniffing mushrooms), I have the feeling that we would have heard quite a bit more about it over the intervening seven years. Scratch-and-sniff, for example, would have made a comeback by now.
posted by pracowity at 1:09 AM on October 3, 2008 [1 favorite]

So this blatantly sexist mushroom discriminates against men? Flagged.
posted by Elmore at 1:14 AM on October 3, 2008 [2 favorites]

I call bullshit on this article and most of the Aphrodisiology site. The mushroom article is from 2001, is one page long, from a journal that Pubmed doesn't bother to index, and costs $35. Other highlights on the site include a summary of a Penthouse article.

Weak.
posted by benzenedream at 1:28 AM on October 3, 2008

It looks just like a Telefunken U-47!
posted by Venadium at 2:04 AM on October 3, 2008 [3 favorites]

I bet they're fantastic beside a bed of fava beans and a nice chianti.
posted by isopraxis at 2:26 AM on October 3, 2008

"His...personal area...is redolent of mushrooms" can now be seen as the compliment that it is.
posted by maxwelton at 2:35 AM on October 3, 2008

I recently tried to buy a nice Portabello, and the silly supermarket girl sold me one of these.

I'm currently suing for the dry cleaning bill I incurred when I sniffed it.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 2:45 AM on October 3, 2008

i'm calling shenanignans on this one!
posted by mary8nne at 2:48 AM on October 3, 2008

must... resist... must... resist...

METAFILTER... which is Latin for dick

damn... failed again...
posted by Joey Michaels at 2:50 AM on October 3, 2008 [1 favorite]

I love the List of Aphrodisiacs. Lists make me horny.
posted by twoleftfeet at 3:00 AM on October 3, 2008

It's time to start drilling; drill, drill, drill, drill

That's drill, baby, drill
posted by netbros at 3:02 AM on October 3, 2008

"Badger, Badger, Badger, Mushroom, MUSHROOOOOOOO-ooohhh God."

That's just the warm-up for the next part: "Snaaaake! Snaaaake!" We men will always be the main act.

(Holy crap, has it really been 5 years since that animation came out?)
posted by mystyk at 3:41 AM on October 3, 2008

so she told me to come over and I took that trip
and then she pulled out my mushroom tip
and when it came out it went drip drip drip
- Sublime
posted by syzygy at 5:33 AM on October 3, 2008

I was just wondering if there was anything analogous to catnip in humans (something found in nature that has an effect just by smell) after giving some to my furball. Somewhat different effect, but pretty cool all the same.
posted by ArgentCorvid at 5:46 AM on October 3, 2008

The International Journal of Medicinal Mushrooms? Come on now. Who is going to fork over the $538 to read the article?

I'd recommend no one, since the credentials of the author are that he apparently is a professional snake oil salesman.
posted by malphigian at 6:24 AM on October 3, 2008 [1 favorite]

Obviously false. Everybody knows women don't have orgasms. Certainly not any I've dated.

Nervous hysteria, maybe.
posted by orthogonality at 6:43 AM on October 3, 2008 [1 favorite]

Toad seen fleeing from Princess Peach with a look of horror on his face...
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 8:13 AM on October 3, 2008 [1 favorite]

You know, there is still room for the discovery of a human sex pheromone, but the evidence so far towards it is extremely weak. Androstenone, the steroid that appears to be an effective sex pheromone in other mammals, doesn't seem to do much in people. And the MHC compatibility story - that we can sense/smell people who are genetically dissimilar to us, while not without merit, lacks solid evidence.

I do remember being told that we had some very complicated receptors in out nose (i.e. good candidates for pheromone receptors), but the general belief is that they are largely non-functional, or work weakly, at best. Certainly, there's good evidence that other factors, such as attractiveness, personality, proximity etc., play a big role in partner selection. So at this point it seems highly unlikely that people are secreting lots of sex hormones that render their ideal mates irresistible.

That being said, if we did have functional sex-pheromome-receptors, it might be possible for some external compound to have a potent agonistic effect that exceeds that of "normal sex pheromones". But I gotta side with pracowity and benzenedream. The evidence of that here is simply not convincing. Personally, if I'd discovered such a compound, I'd be publishing a lot higher than the International Journal of Medicinal Mushrooms.
posted by kisch mokusch at 8:44 AM on October 3, 2008 [1 favorite]

The only thing I smell is another really bad Sandra Bullock movie.
posted by any major dude at 9:06 AM on October 3, 2008

So mushrooms is the Earth sportin wood.
posted by doctorschlock at 9:58 AM on October 3, 2008

Hey there, sweet thing! Want to come over to my place and sniff some fungus?

No? I have etchings!

Ummmm, Officer, those are kind of tight. Can you loosen the cuffs a bit?
posted by Samizdata at 10:11 AM on October 3, 2008

Either this is bullshit, or all the people involved in the research have been too busy having constant sex for the last seven years.

Or... maybe the lack of any additional information is because of something more sinister; perhaps the Government is covering this research up! You know what? I bet the Government is working on weaponizing this effect; imagine dropping a bomb that makes all the women in an area insatiably hungry for sex! You could take over a country without firing a shot! Jesus, think of the the moral implications though, I mean, this is practically mind control! And what if it has hallucinogenic properties as well? People would be tripping and horny, it would lead to all sorts of uncontrolled wild sex!

I'm gonna write my senator and put a stop to this! (Or at least get some samples so I can evaluate the effects for myself.)
posted by quin at 10:12 AM on October 3, 2008

Meet-up in Hawaii!

How disappointing. Uncontrolled wild sex sounds awesome!
posted by mitzyjalapeno at 10:26 AM on October 3, 2008

Not when I'm in the next room trying to get some sleep.
posted by Floydd at 11:12 AM on October 3, 2008 [1 favorite]

The Dictyophora Indusiata is a type of morel. (This site has great pics of mushrooms)


It's a type of stinkhorn. It's not even in the same Division as morels, which are Ascomycota. Stinkhorns are in Basidomycota. So they're really pretty unrelated.
posted by oneirodynia at 11:29 AM on October 3, 2008

Oh, and I call bullshit on this article. It seems like a sneaky way to get credulous dames to get up close and personal to mushrooms that reek of rotting meat.
posted by oneirodynia at 11:33 AM on October 3, 2008

oneirodynia, the Dictyophora Indusiata is from the Halymeniacea family, of the order Phallales.

It is included in the Morel Hunters site because the Dictyophora indusiata is referred to as "The veiled stink morel". "It belongs to the stink morels, and is called the Skirted Stinkhorn (Dictyophora sp.)"
posted by nickyskye at 2:43 PM on October 3, 2008

Nonetheless, nickyskye, what you said was, "The Dictyophora Indusiata is a type of morel."

That is patently false; as much as if you said, "The Ursus arctos is a type of cow."
posted by IAmBroom at 2:59 PM on October 3, 2008

BTW, the YT video that begins this post is of course lapsed-time photography, but it's still pretty fast, in mushroom terms - it might only cover a single day.
posted by IAmBroom at 3:01 PM on October 3, 2008

Well, I've smelled Dictyophora, and... nothing happened.
posted by acrasis at 4:02 PM on October 3, 2008

Regardless of the believability of the article, the time-lapse video is pretty awesome. I don't think I'd seen time-lapse video of fungi before, but now I hunger for more.
posted by ErWenn at 4:24 PM on October 3, 2008

The morel of the story is that the stink morel is falsely called a morel, it is not a type of morel. That MorelHunters site obviously has loose morels.
posted by nickyskye at 4:24 PM on October 3, 2008 [1 favorite]

nickyskye, Orders come after Divisions; the two mushrooms are really not closely related at all. Even though they may be called "stink morels" the "morels" part is based on morphology of the fruiting body, and does not mean there is a relationship to the Morel (Morchella) family. It's also not necessarily the common name all mycologists use; Mushrooms Demystified calls D. indusiata "basket stinkhorn". A botanist would never say that a common name is an indicator of a Family- the name "Osage orange" is not an indicator of membership in Citrus sinensis. However, there is an informal name for the Family Phallaceae which is the "Stinkhorn Family".

(Dictyophora of the Halymeniaceae family are from the Plant kingdom, of the Order Halymeniales. I think it's some type of algae.)

Under the surface, morels and stinkhorns emerge from different structures entirely, and that difference is the first place one looks when keying out Morchella (Phallales emerge from an egg-like structure called a volva, Morchella do not).
posted by oneirodynia at 4:50 PM on October 3, 2008 [2 favorites]

I bet the Government is working on weaponizing this effect; imagine dropping a bomb that makes all the women in an area insatiably hungry for sex!

I assume you know that they tried to do that with MDMA.
posted by flaterik at 4:53 PM on October 3, 2008

Whoops! My typing speed stinks. Sorry for the phallaceus morelizing.
posted by oneirodynia at 4:54 PM on October 3, 2008

phallaceus morelizing

lol, Well then, you better take up your complaint with the folks who coined the term stink morel and the MorelHunters site.

Guess it just looks like a morel. A morel wannabe with bamboo pithiness.

But wasn't that video of the morel bamboo Dictyophora Indusiata awesome?! That net thing is so bizarre looking as it bursts out.
posted by nickyskye at 5:19 PM on October 3, 2008

oh yeah, any idea how come they called it a volva and not a vulva?
posted by nickyskye at 5:22 PM on October 3, 2008

Yeah, the video was super cool. Another one that would make a great video is the Stinky Whiffleball, Clathrus ruber, shown at the bottom of this page. You can actually dig them up when they're in the egg (volva) stage and eat them, but they're pretty slimy and unappealing, IMO. One of my least favorite mushroom textures, definitely. Not worth it for the taste, either. Michael Kuo has some amusing things to say about that:

Recent criminology research has determined that Clathrus ruber is a diet staple for psycho killers living in remote mountain shacks. This discovery, stumbled onto by a mushroom-loving grad student at Quantico who rearranged the letters of Clathrus ruber to get "RURAL BUTCHERS," may lead to the development of new FBI profiles.
posted by oneirodynia at 5:33 PM on October 3, 2008

I ate that mushroom a while ago in a soup in a chinese restaurant (if you're going to Vienna, ask me the address: best chinese restaurant in Europe so far). The stem has no odor and an incredible texture, much like a tube of wafer, being somehow rigid and filled with air bubbles.

Ms. _ had the same soup, with no observable side effects, I am sad to report.
Subsequent orgasms were not directly attributable to the mushrooms, anyway.
posted by _dario at 6:25 PM on October 3, 2008

Hoo boy, oneirodynia, there's a fungus among us. Those look like stinkers, the 'shrooms you linked. The dog one needs a nsfw disclaimer. (That's a really excellent photograph site). Dang, how do you know so much about mushrooms? I'm totally impressed. Horticulturalist? Botanist? Gardener?
posted by nickyskye at 6:44 PM on October 3, 2008

If this were an aphrodisiac, weaponization would not be far-fetched. The military was researching a gay bomb a few years ago, no word on whether it contained mushrooms.

True or not, nickyskye, this is a fun collection of interesting links. Loved the first video and am intrigued by the orange veil. Plus the idea of bands of women cavorting around sniffing mushrooms to climax is so silly and surreal.

Under the surface, morels and stinkhorns emerge from different structures entirely, and that difference is the first place one looks when keying out Morchella (Phallales emerge from an egg-like structure called a volva, Morchella do not).

Day-umn. I am always in awe of the vast repository of knowledge at mefi. So many mefites are so smart.
posted by madamjujujive at 7:04 PM on October 3, 2008

There's an aphrodisiology.com???? Where the hell was this site when I was a young man?
posted by mds35 at 8:39 PM on October 3, 2008

There's an aphrodisiology.com???? Where the hell was this site when I was a young man?

You probably didn't need it.
posted by semmi at 8:58 PM on October 3, 2008

Dang, how do you know so much about mushrooms? I'm totally impressed. Horticulturalist? Botanist? Gardener?

I am a horticulturalist and garden designer, now studying to be a landscape architect. But the place I learned about mushrooms was by taking a mushroom class a couple years ago at Merritt College here in Oakland. It was pretty darn awesome- each class we foraged for mushrooms in the hills around campus and cooked them up; plus learned quite a bit about propagation and mycoremediation. There are few things more lovely than wandering around in the woods hunting down chanterelles. I go out to a little patch every winter and bring home a pound or two.

Those look like stinkers, the 'shrooms you linked.


Oh, man. They used to grow right by the horticulture dept. gate. Luckily they melt down pretty fast after they erupt.
posted by oneirodynia at 4:46 PM on October 4, 2008 [1 favorite]

Ok, hot off the presses. A person emailed me and said:

I'm an unregistered MetaFilter lurker--I suppose I should pay the five bucks already (I spend way too much time online as it is, but don't we all)--and regarding your "Aphrodisiology" post I can't believe no one has said
Baby let me smell yo Dictyophora

(Riskay official video for Smell Yo Dick)

Had to include that video for posterity in this thread, it's simply too good.
posted by nickyskye at 10:08 AM on October 14, 2008