Mushrooms

An adventurous spirit, Angelo Crippa often foraged for wild mushrooms in the hills above Santa Barbara. But the 82-year-old's lifelong hobby turned tragic when he mistakenly picked the wrong ones in a wooded park near Arroyo Burro Beach, sauteing them with a steak for what would be his last meal. Crippa died a week ago at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital, seven days after he ate a heaping plate of the deadly Amanita ocreata mushrooms, said his wife, Joan Crippa.

Greg Miller has an unusual idea of what constitutes good weather: The more rain, he said, the better. "With all the sun out here it's sometimes terrible," said Miller, a wildlife biologist who volunteers at the Environmental Nature Center in Newport Beach. This year's abundance of precipitation has made him a happy man. To show just how happy he has become, Miller recently led the season's first wild mushroom walk at the center.

Vitamin D, the "sunshine vitamin," got its nickname because our bodies rely on a bit of sun exposure to manufacture the vitamin under the surface of the skin. But some recent research shows that a little bit of ultraviolet light also boosts vitamin D production where you might not expect it -- in fresh mushrooms. A serving of conventionally cultivated white mushrooms contains small amounts of one form of vitamin D, called ergocalciferol, or vitamin D2.

Four members of a Santa Cruz family who were poisoned eating wild mushrooms on New Year's Day have been released from the hospital, but two others remain in critical condition. The pair are so ill that they may require liver transplants, although doctors are doing what they can to stabilize their health since replacement organs are scarce, said Kevin McCormack, a spokesman for California Pacific Medical Center.

The Dutch government banned the sale of hallucinogenic mushrooms, tightening drug policies after the suicide of an intoxicated teenager. The ban was the latest backlash against the freewheeling policies of the past. Psilocybin, the main active chemical in the mushrooms, has been illegal under international law since 1971. But fresh mushrooms were sold legally here on the theory that it was impossible to determine how much psilocybin a given mushroom has.

The Spanish sky was robin's-egg blue. My knuckles were frightened-guy white. As I clutched the door of our four-wheel drive, my wife, Colleen, pretzeled herself into a modified fetal position. Her face ashen, she said, "I never knew mushroom hunting was a contact sport." It's not supposed to be. But as guide Gregori Ruiz swerved to avoid a deep rut in a mountain road, I wasn't so sure. To our left was a dense red pine forest. To our right, a 1,000-foot drop-off.

Chanterelle -- the very name of the prized mushroom smacks of elegance, the hush of fine dining, the discreet sigh of the discerning gourmet. But in Lompoc these days, it has another image: felony fungus. Santa Barbara County sheriff's deputies Thursday showed off a haul of chanterelles -- the booty, they said, of high-tech mushroom thieves from the Pacific Northwest who have allegedly plagued local ranchers for a decade or longer.

Extracts from a mushroom used for centuries in Eastern Asian medicine may be able to boost the power of a leading chemotherapy drug for prostate cancer, researchers have found. They found that when the mushroom \o7Phellinus linteus\f7 was added to doxorubicin in the laboratory it improved the drug's ability to kill cancerous cells.

Resting on a hospital bed beneath a tie-dyed wall hanging, Pamela Sakuda felt a tingling sensation. Then bright colors started shimmering in her head. She had been depressed since being diagnosed with colon cancer two years earlier, but as the experimental drug took hold, she felt the sadness sweep away from her, leaving in its wake an overpowering sense of connection to loved ones, followed by an inner calm. "It was like an epiphany," said Sakuda, 59, recalling the 2005 drug treatment.

TREMENDOUSLY enjoyed the artichoke article ["Look Out, It's Thistle Fever!" by Amy Scattergood, April 5]. There is nothing like true homage to a noble vegetable. MARY WAWRO \o7Los Angeles \f7\o7 \f7 LEAVE my artichoke alone! Last Sunday we went to Cannons in Dana Point where for years we had always ordered the artichoke with dill sauce and butter. To our horror we were served a mutilated artichoke -- a third of the top cut off and the center scooped out and filled with mushrooms.