Biodiversity – wild, wild Berlin

Modern Noah’s Arksailing away with DNA Page 2

What are the foxesdoing in Berlin? Page 3

The A-Z of wildlifein the city Page 3

Passionate aboutmushrooms Page 4

International Media StudiesVol 4 Published by International Institute for Journalism / GIZ & Deutsche Welle October 2011

Green Berlin – still a dream?The Red List of Berlin labels 136 plants with “very high” protection priority. But are they really protected? Herbert Winkelmann, biolo-gist and co-compiwler of the list, says not enough is being done

To what degree are plants in Berlin endangered?The situation is far from ideal. After the fall of the wall the mass construction began which caused disappearance of certain species within the city. For example, wild, empty areas were taken up for housebuilding in districts such as the Diplomaten-viertel. Due to its climate, Berlin’s ecosystem is very special – the average temperature is two to three degrees higher than in the neighborhood. This means, Mediterranean species, which can be found here, are unique for northern Germany.

Why are plants important for the ecosystem?If one rare species lives on a rare plant and this plant disap-pears, it leads to the extinction of the animal. On an oak, for instance, about thousand spe-cies may be living. If we lose the oak, all these animals will become extinct as well.

What is being done to sustain biodiversity?One of the measures is the list of endangered species published by the Berlin Senate. However, the list is compiled by private specialists who do not get paid for them, and, therefore, its constant update is problematic.

How can the situation be improved?We should promote the know-ledge of the species and this should start at school. If we do not know a species, we simply do not notice when it disappears.

Interview: Aleksandra Poliakova

Detailed information about Berlin’s ecosystem including the Red List:www.stadtentwicklung.berlin.de/natur_gruen

Interview

The Godmother of “Flower Power”A new take on biodiversity: People protecting their favourite plants

Only the strongest survive in the urban jungle

By Eira Martens, Veve Hitipeuw and Aleksandra Poliakova

A s one of the oldest and biggest institutions of its kind, the Berlin

Botanic Garden is leading a new trend. One hundred god-fathers and godmothers are taking care of plants from all world regions.

What does biodiversity mean? Gesche Hohlstein, spokesperson of the Botanic Garden Museum in Berlin-Dahlem, compares it to learning a language. Both are very complex and take a long time to be fully understood. A walk through the garden only allows visitors to get to know a very small number of the 22.000 species. “If we walk for six and a half years through our garden, every day even on Sun-days, we still haven’t seen every-thing,” explains Hohlstein. With 43 hectares of greenery the Berlin Botanic Garden is one of the largest parks worldwide.

The park founded in 1679 offers its visitors a “green world tour”: An abundance of trees, ferns, flowers and shrubbery are cultivated ac-cording to their geographic origin displaying the fauna of Europe, Asia and America.

Inge Weinert, 76, is one of the long-standing godmothers of the Botanic Garden. Carefully she bends down to take in the fading scent one of the last blossoms of the yellow cone flower planted

Tim Besser, 36, is another spon-sor. He is the proud godfather of the manioc plant. “Manioc is one of the most important food crops in Brazil,” Besser explains – and he chose it because his management consultancy Besser International cooperates with Latin America, one of its main markets.

Besser’s money, like all dona-tions, is directly invested into the area of the Botanic Garden where his manioc is cultivated among many other species. The spon-sors’ donations help but are not enough to maintain the plants. “The biggest benefit is the person-al commitment,” says spokesper-son Gesche Hohlstein.

The Gardens are indeed in a poor financial state: After the fall of the Berlin wall they were handed over from the Senate to the Free University of Berlin, and soon the organization was threat-ened with closure due to drastic financial cuts. One of the founders of the godfather project is well-known German comedian Wigald Boning. But still “the Garden would need much more promi-nent support,” says biologist Her-bert Winkelmann (see side bar).

For now at least the garden can rely on committed godfathers and godmothers such as Inge Weinert, a busy grandmother of six. “I al-ways feel great when I am there,” she tells us with a radiant smile.

Become a sponsor: www.bgbm.org

The challenge of biodiversity: Nature struggling to enter the gates of urban life

in the yard of Sophiengartenresi-denz. The retirement home has been supporting the maintenance of the flower since 2003. Weinert decided to spend her sunset years here because it is only a walk away from the Botanic Garden.

After having lived in Colum-bia for four years the young Inge Weinert had returned to Germany

in the Seventies. Desperately look-ing for a job, the mother of three ended up in the trial department of the Federal Agency of Biology. “I didn’t know anything about plants, so I started to go to the Botanic Garden to learn about them,” she remembers. Finally, Inge Weinert knew more about tropical species than her fellow experts.

Today, she pays 300 Euros of her modest pension as an indi-vidual sponsorship every year to save the Pereskia Grandifolia, a rare leave cactus. “I am always re-lieved when I manage to pay the last installment around Christmas time”, she admits.

The Berlin Botanic Garden sponsorship project started in 2000.

It currently counts 86 individual sponsors and 14 arrangements with businesses and other institutions. The sponsors can choose to make an annual volunteer contribution between 250 and 1500 Euros which can be renewed or cancelled at any time. Each of them receives a certifi-cate and his or her name is put on the plate next to the plant.

Godmother on duty: Inge Weinert knows all about coneflowers

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Sceptical: biologist Herbert Winkelmann

The drama of biodiversity is un-folding in Germany’s capital,

right under the Brandenburger Tor. The fragility of a butterfly against the magnitude of the monument in this photo collage symbolises the struggle of nature to adapt to urban life, and vice versa.

Biodiversity is the variety of life in the world. Scientists have identi-fied 1.75 million species, but mil-lions are still unkown. In Berlin, a city larger than two hundred soccer fields, 3.4 million inhabitants share their living space with an endless number of wild species: Often un-noticed, plants find their home growing in the cracks of sidewalks, birds build their nests on rooftops.

In the urban jungle some spe-cies disappear while others invade. Berliners have come to live with foxes and boars again. On the other hand, some plant species such as the coneflower are disappearing.

Our environment is changing.A challenge, yes, but also a chance to reconnect with nature – which, af-ter all, we are a part of. It inspires us to create art, fall in love, and some-times makes us feel as light, and re-sistent, as a butterfly.

By Francis França

I magine an oasis to preserve the genetic code of thou-sands of species from our

planet’s biodiversity. If your mind is traveling through a bucolic for-est with all mother earth’s colors, sounds and smells, you have got the wrong picture. One of the most important centers for biodi-versity storage in Germany is lo-cated in the middle of its 3.4 mil-lion people capital Berlin, at the end of a long white corridor and smells like bleach.

The DNA Bank inside the Bo-tanic Garden Berlin-Dahlem is comprised of three freezers not larger than a normal family’s fridge. They can harbor more than the amazing number of 100,000 samples of genetic code (DNA) of plants under minus 81 degrees Celsius, but the only ref-erence to real life in the room is an amusing – and ironic – picture on the freezer’s door of “Scrat”, the funny saber-toothed squirrel in the “Ice Age” animation movie.

Big cities might not seem the best environment for biodiver-sity protection. Yet according to Dr. Holger Zetzsche, 38, manager of the DNA Bank Network, wild life has no other chance. “Since agriculture is a big threat to biodi-versity especially in densely pop-ulated countries such as Germa-ny, certain species of plants and animals are found only either in very remote areas or in cities.”

In his DNA Bank, life remains in its latent form. Cells, seeds or leafs of each species are stored and cata-logued for research and experiments.

The BGBM is part of the DNA Bank Network and works with similar insti-tutes in Germany and New York. Together they store more than 42,000 DNA samples of plants, animals and bacteria. The re-search is funded by the Deutsche

Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), a parastatal organisation. Ger-many also works in cooperation with institutions from all over the world to store seeds in the Global Seed Vault in Norway (see article below), represented by the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK) in Gatersleben.

Such a huge biological ef-fort has a very simple reason: species on the planet are dying faster than ever. Some scholars estimate that we will have lost fifty percent of our biodiversity by 2100. And since humans are the cause of this mass extinc-tion, scientists are convinced that we should better start fixing the damage now in order to assure our own survival. “It may seem that we are trying to go against Darwin’s theory and stop evolu-tion, but this is not our intention. We protect the species whose absence could have bad conse-quences for humans,” admits Dr. Zetzsche.

Seed banks and DNA banks collect samples of crop species

and, whenever requested, send a portion of these seeds to be rede-ployed in a certain region.

“Every year we send around 20,000 crop seeds to be planted in various parts of the world, such as wheat for the

Middle East,” explains Profes-sor Andreas Graner, 54, head of the crop research institute IPK in Leibniz. Researchers as well as governments or even farmers can request seeds and plant material from his bank.

With ani-mals the process is more complex, though. Scientists need stem cells in or-der to clone them, but this is still far from being usual practice.

Some important species for human life would not even stand a chance alone out there. “If you release a cow in nature it will probably starve to death,” exempli-fies Professor Graner. These species need humans to survive, and that is why sci-entists store, together with the genes of traditional animals or crops, samples of their wild relatives - such as in-digenous cattle or strain of wheat which would be able to survive alone in extreme condi-tions.

Keeping the DNA of a spe-cies is nonetheless no guaran-tee for bringing a certain plant or animal back to life. Prophet Noah would certainly not be able to save animals with only one pair of each species – as the Bibble suggests. “Scientists need suf-ficient genetic di-versity to establish a population,” says Dr. Zetzsche. The genebank of the IPK, for example, has about 3,000 different species, and for each of them, thousand of samples. Among them there are 25,000 samples of barley and more than 30,000 samples of wheat. So, at least mankind will neither run out of beer nor bread in the future.

2 Dossier: Biodiversity – wild, wild Berlin October 2011

Scientists store life in modern Noah’s ArkSpecies are ripped out of our planet faster than ever. In order to preserve biodiversity, institutes across Germany keep more than 40,000 DNA samples of animals and plants – and the headquarter of the network is in Berlin

By Helen Mendes

Buried in permafrost, in-side a bombproof bun-ker protected against

floods, earthquakes and other natural disasters, a vault holds a treasure for mankind. It keeps a collection of seeds that are important for food produc-tion. Located in the remote Norwegian region of Svalbard, north of the Arctic Circle, this is the largest collection of seeds in the world.

Science institutes from Berlin and the entire world send their seeds to Norway to create a safety net to protect agriculture biodi-versity.

The so-called “Doomsday Seed Bank” was opened in 2008 and has the capacity of storing 4,5 mil-lion different seed samples – each sample contains an average of 500 seeds, to ensure the safety of crop diversity in case of natural disas-ters or war. The vault was built by

Norway, its construction cost nine million dollars. The Global Crop Diversity Trust runs its operations, and is funded by governments and private donations.

What is threatening our crops,

and why do we need a backup of our most important seeds? The wildest catastrophic scenarios can be imagined – locust plagues, air-borne fungi, asteroid collision or nuclear war. But a more realistic

menace to food security is already in place – the environmental transformations caused by climate change.

The seeds come from gene banks all over the world. The Leibniz Institute of Plant Genet-ics and Crop Plant Research (IPK), from Germany, for example, sends seed samples from local crops like wheat, barley and cabbages every two years – to assure the survival of the “Sauerkraut”.

“The conditions for life on Earth are ever changing and we cannot assume that a seed from the present will grow in a future modified environment. Therefore our seed bank needs to be updat-ed often,” says researcher Andreas Graner of the IPK. “Most of the samples should be able to survive for up to 40 years, but after 200 years, I would have my concerns.”

The ice cold temperature slows the process of aging in the seeds, but eventually, they grow old and die. That’s why it is necessary to

plant them from time to time, and harvest fresh seeds, so they can be perpetuated.

In this sense, the Norwe-gian vault is a constant quest to protect the treasure of nature. Come hell or high water, vital seeds will be safe inside the fro-zen fortress in Svalbard.

A labyrinth of herbs: Dr. Holger Zetsche heads the DNA Bank in Berlin

In case of doomsday, break the ice! PHO

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“We protect species

important for human survival”

�Scientific infos about Ger-man DnA Bank network www.dnabank-network.org

�Homepage of Leibniz Insti-

tute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK) www.ipk-gatersleben.de

�Peep into Svalbard Global Seed Vault, nature’s bunker in norway www.seedvault.no

More on DNA Banks

Nature’s jewelry: a DNA helix

containing the code for every

single life on the planet

Credits / Impressum: Produced by International Media Studies in collaboration with IIJ/GIZ and Deutsche Welle. editorial team: Aleksandra Poliakowa, Anne ndung’u, Arti ekawati, eira Martens, Farzana Khan, Francis França, Helen Mendes, Katsiaryna Kryzhanouskaya, naim Zeqiri, Tianlin Xu, Veve Hitipeuw, Ziggi Song. Trainers: Andrea Tapper, Olaf Herling. Berlin, October 2011

Frozen treasure: Food seeds for future generations

October 2011 Dossier: Biodiversity – wild, wild Berlin 3

Dangerous or endangered?The German capital is invaded by wild animals. Foxes, wild boars, raccoons, beavers and others fight for their right to be real Berliners

Attention! Boars ahead!Experts‘ advice in case a wild animal strays into a home or is spotted on the streets: Don‘t panic

By Katsiaryna Kryzhanouskaya

I saw a fox sitting in my gar-den, it wasn’t afraid at all and even looked at me with

curiosity when I shouted at it to make it go,” says project manager Annette Ehrminger, 48, who lives nearby the Berlin Airport. “Berlin is densely populated by wild ani-mals. Many people still think that the wild forest is their real home and it is an exception to see an animal in the city. Not anymore,” comments Marc Franusch, 47, expert of the Berlin’s Forestry de-partment. The beasts thrive in a large and green city such as Berlin

with lots of food, parks and wa-ter. “Gen-erations of Berlin wild boars have never seen a real for-est,” Fra-nusch says:

“There is a chance to meet a fox almost anywhere.”His office is situated in the out-skirts of Berlin, in a small two-sto-rey building surrounded by trees. It seems that the people working here on wild life protection may easily meet their fosterlings. But the specialists are quick to ex-plain: in this time of the year it is rather unlikely. Animals have enough food in forests, so there is no need for them to roam in the streets looking for leftovers.

Reunification of nature

Food is the main reason why wild animals come to urban areas. “Here they always have a “richly served table,” says Franusch. No more hungry winter: Trash bins at the back yards of fast-food chains such as Mc Donald’s offer a tasty menu – and foxes don’t mind eating ham-burgers and chips instead of their traditional dishes, mice or hares. Many Berliners reckon that the proliferation of wild life, espe-cially of wild boars, started after

the fall of the Berlin wall – a kind of reunification of the animal kingdom. Marc Franusch doesn’t agree. The living together of ani-mals and human beings in the urban surrounding is not a new phenomenon, he insists, it existed hundreds of years ago. Still he admits that during the last twenty years the number of ani-mals in Berlin has been growing. “The wonderful blackbird – now a classical dweller of our gardens – had not lived here before. It was only around 15 years ago that it set-tled in the city,” explains the expert. According to specialists it is impos-sible to count how many animals live in the capital today. Around 1500 wild boars are hunted in

Berlin annually – the number in-dicating the scope of the popula-tion. Nevertheless, another proc-ess is going on simultaneously. Due to construction works, dense building-up and removal of dead wood a lot of species leave the city because their living space evapo-rates. Their existence becomes endangered. Such plants and ani-mals are included in the Red List of Berlin (see sidebar).

Clash of civilizations

For the last twelve years Marc Franusch – a friendly man look-ing much younger that he really is - has been responsible for inform-ing Berliners about the rules of

harmonious co-existence with the wild neighbors. Oddly enough, being one of the most experienced people he has also become a vic-tim – a fox stole two of his rabbits. “Well, it happened just after we moved to our family house. It was a real chaos and for around two days the rabbits had to live in the garden. We realized the risk, but thought that nothing would hap-pen in this short time.” The acci-dent didn’t change his attitude to the wild inhabitants of the city: “I love them!” he exclaims.

Amazing variety

The list of species living in Berlin is impressive: wild boars, foxes, rac-coons, common newts, beavers, white-tailed eagles – hundreds of species who feel at home here. They are wild, but not dangerous, Marc Franusch insists: “There are still no poisonous snakes, black bears and big cats. The only prob-lematic animal is the wild boar, but if you respect it, stay aside and hold your dog on the line in spring when they have nestlings – you are safe.” Yet, after centuries of living to-gether people and animals are still in conflict. Animals ruin gar-dens, kill pets, sometimes may even harm people, and as they belong to no one, no one is pay-ing for the damage. Marc Fra-nusch gets really nervous when he hears about a wild animal bit-ing a person. Once he received a call about the fox that has bitten a school guard – such things sel-dom occur. The surprised specialist tried to figure out how that could happen and found out: “They had a com-petition for the coolest picture of the fox made with a mobile phone,” explains the specialist. The “winner” took the animal in his hands and the scared animal tried to protect itself. “I want to make it clear,” Franusch insists, “the fox is not dangerous, neither is the raccoon, nor the wild boar. All they need is our respect, so we should simply let them live.”

The A – Z of wildlife in the cityEndangered animals, danger-ous animals and rare plants – they all form the biota of the Germany’s capital. Some of them need special protection

The most endangered animalse u r a s i a n Hobby, a small and slim fal-con, is one of the 14 most en-dangered birds species living in Berlin. You can rec-ognize the hobby by its rust-colored “pants”. Only two hobbies were spotted in the German capital this year. Among other animals on the Red List of Berlin, the official list of endangered spe-cies, is the turtle dove. The brown bird has a black-and-white striped patch on the neck. Its tail can be seen only when the bird is flying. Turtle dove means “lover” in Ger-man (“Turteltaube”). Isn’t it sad that there are fewer and fewer lovers in Berlin?

The most endangered plantsMore than 2000 plants species are known in Berlin. 7 percent of them are considered endan-gered. For instance, the spread-ing bellflower – a plant with small purple flowers and narrow pointed leaves, growing mainly in forests. It can be more than half a meter high.

The Red List of BerlinGives an overview of endangered plants and animals living in the city. After its first release in 1982 it was updated several times and now includes 7087 species. More than a half of them are insects. Several groups of animals and plants have been added, for example vascular plants, mosses, lichens and mol-lusks. The Red List is compiled and published by the Senate of Berlin with an input of independent sci-entists.

Wildlife entering the cityWild boars are, probably, the most famous wild animals living in Berlin. They can be really huge, growing up to 1.80 meter high and weighing around 150 kilos. normally they live in the periphery of Berlin but more and more often they invade the city, living in its forests and parks. Their number is unknown. These animals may at-tack if they feel cornered and are very sensitive during the nestling time in April and May. Still, they are not as dangerous as many people think. There are also other new species moving into the city. Among such “new Berliners” is the raccoon, a nocturnal predator that can never be domesticated.

By naim Zeqiri

Animal invasion: a fox at a bus stop in Berlin-Zehlendorf

Wild beauty: Spreading Bellflower

Biodiversity in the German capital: a family of boars living on the street

Discover wild Berlin

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By Anne Ndung’u

T o start with: Know what wild animals you are likely to find in your city. This is

general consent among experts. Racoons, foxes and boars are quite common in Berlin, for example. �If you run into wild animals, walk around them or look for an alternative way. Watch out for animals with young ones. Boars can be particularly vicious then and might attack. But generally, boars are not as dangerous as people think.�Don’t panic. Most wild animals reemerging in European cities are harmless and will not attack un-less threatened. If you want to get rid of a fox in your garden, for instance, experts advise to make loud noise to scare them off.

Passion for wildlife: expert Marc Franusch

Eurasian Hobby

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�Berlin has started a special “Wild animal hotline” (Telephone 030/64193723) which receives up to thirty calls a day of people ask-ing for help. One can get informa-tion about the rare possibility of getting rabies from a fox bite or the somewhat dangerous looking grass snake which is mostly harmless. It will escape if given leeway and rarely bites. �Another advice: Don’t feed wild animals. Feeding accustoms them to human presence and they lose the instinct to search for food. Keep a clean environment where the animals might scavenge for food. Close rubbish bins tightly, clear up leftovers and enclose compost pits in your garden. �A fine of 5000 Euro is charged in Berlin for feeding wild ani-mals.

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Learn more about wildlife in Berlin�Multimedia project about wildlife of Berlin - www.wildesberlin.de �Berlin branch of nature protection organisation - www.berlin.nabu.de �Museum of natural history - www.naturkundemuseum-berlin.de

4 Dossier: Biodiversity - wild, wild Berlin October 2011

Mushroom maniacs Germans love mushroom hunting - and some take their passion even further

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Neither plant nor animal

W hen we see mushrooms on the soil, at the first

glance we might think it’s a plant. The fact is mushrooms are fungi (fungus). It is obvi-ously not an animal as it does not eat either animals or plants, which is a rather simple way to classify animals. neither is the mushroom a plant because it does not contain chlorophyll and cannot make its own food, which is how a plant is classi-fied. Mushrooms actually absorb food and nutrients from their surrounding. They are also part of the lifeline of many plants. Lots of fungi live tangled up with the plant’s roots, and help to pass on nutrients. This benefits the plant as well as the mushrooms. Trees could die without the help of mushrooms. And when trees are dying, the world will have more harmful CO2. Mushrooms grow up at any place, on soil, in water, in buildings and even on dead bodies. Mushroom play a prime role in the daily life of human beings and biodiversity. They are utilized in the food industry (cheese, bread, beer), agriculture, medicine (penicillin),in textiles recycling and as bio-fertilizers. Without mushrooms the world smell like a grave, because the most impor-tant function of fungi is to help process dead plant and animal matter through decline, for example turning cow dung to soil.

By Farzana Kabir Khan

What is amushroom?

Fungi fans: Heinrich Waldschütz (right) and his group meet every week to discuss their beloved mushrooms such as this curry-smelling Fenugreek Milkcap

By Tianlin Xu

L ocated on the fifth floor, the meeting room of mush-room lovers appears white

and clean, decorated in modern minimalistic style. Around twenty people between 20 and 80 years sit on the round table covered with different sorts of wild mushrooms, concentrating on listening to Horst Streese, the eldest member of the club. Today he reports on the current scientific debate about “the differenciation between Rus-sula graveolens and brevis.” Qui-etly I slip into the room and find a seat near Heinrich Waldschütz. He has been a member of the “Berlin-Brandenburg Mycologi-cal Working Group” (Pilzkundli-che Arbeitsgemeinschaft Berlin-Brandenburg/PABB) for twenty years.

Like some other members of the working group, Waldschütz, a 59 year-old biology teacher, is not only a nature lover but also has a certificate as a mushroom consult-ant and contributes his expertise to the Center of Poison Emer-gency Call in Berlin. “We help the doctors define the type of toxic mushrooms, and sometimes even have to check the grastric content under microscope, so they can save their patients’ lives.”

The mushroom club was founded as a meeting place of hobby and professional ecologists to share and exchange informa-tions about fungus. “It’s a very good cooperation,” Waldschütz raises his eyebrows proudly. “They collect and we research.”

As I am astonished by the se-ducing color of Amanita Muscaria and the ordinary look of the ex-treme toxic mushroom Death Cap, fresh on the table. People start introducing and passing around the mushrooms they brought in today. There is one young-ster among the elderly folk. Like everyone else, Victor Groenke, a 28-year-old mathematic student, observes every detail of the mush-rooms by the magnifer, smells them and takes notes carefully.

“People don’t choose their hobbies, but the hobbies choose them.” Victor laughs when I’m asking how he became interested in fungi. He explains: After seeing a picture of a Stinkhorn, a weird looking mushroom, as a child, he could never move away from these magical creatures. “The joy comes from understanding their diversity and their symbiotic re-lationship to other creatures.” When he moved to Berlin in 2009, he joined PABB and felt like a lost kid finally finding his home.

Since people in my country China rarely pick mushrooms themselves, I am very lucky to try out this experience as Victor takes me to the Bellevue Park in Berlin city. Plenty of rain and mild temperature makes this autumn a real golden season for mushroom-hunting. Just near the Bellevue S-Bahn station we target our first mushrooms among the bushes, a Giant Puffball near a cluster of tiny Kaesepilzchen. Part of the Gi-ant Puffball has been nibbled by snails, which makes it look even more like a sponge. “You find

edible mushrooms almost eve-rywhere in Berlin. Just beware of the ones near the street, they could be polluted.”

Mushroom hunting has bec-ome a weekly routine for Victor but he has no intention to make his passion a career: “My girlfriend normally has no problem with my hobby, but if I stop every two meters to look for mushrooms, it might get on her nerves. Well, but she still supports me ...” Talk-ing about the two most important “things” in his life, the young man starts to smile lovely, again.

Passionate: Victor Gruenke (center), 28, the youngest of the mushroom club

PHOTO: OenDeRWIJSGeK

Evil or good? Even deadly mushrooms play a role in biodiversity

By Arti Ekawati

They are surrounded by myths. Some people think of them as evil. They can kill

efficiently with small dosage. Why do toxic mushrooms exist anyway?

Hansjörg Beyer, 44, mushroom advisor at the Berlin Botanic Gar-

den and Botanic Museum,

says

of 1500 varieties of mushroom in Berlin, about hundred are edible and about forty are deadly dan-gerous.

Best known among the toxix ones is the Fly Agaric or Fly Amanita (Amanita muscaria), the bright red-colored mushroom with white dots on its cap popularized by fairytales. On the one hand, it is highly toxic and has psychedelic effects such as hallucinations, on the other, it is of-ten used in homeopathy for neuro-logical problems or even cancer.

Another lethal example is the Death Cap (Amanita phalloides). Having light brown color and a cap between four to twelve cen-timeters wide, it is sometimes confused with champignon. The

only thing that differentiates the

Death Cap is its strong smell of honey.

“One mushroom is enough to kill,” Beyer says. People will not feel anything after eating it, but af-ter the next six to forty hours they will have digestive problems. Af-terwards they will feel better and think they have healed, but at this phase the poison is actually de-stroying their lever, causing death.

Evil for humans, the Death Cap however also has a positive role: “It is easier for big trees to absorb water if these mushrooms grow near to their roots,” Beyer says. “Without them, we would have no life on earth,” he under-lines.

Yet, you have to be care-ful not to eat the wrong mush-

room. According to the data of Berlin-Brandenburg Mycological Working Group (PABB), in 2010 there were twelve cases of mush-room poisoning across Germany, one woman died after eating the Death Cap.

What to do if you have acciden-tally eaten a poisonous mushroom? “First symptoms are dizziness, di-gestive problems and headache. It is important to remain calm,” says expert Beyer. ”Bring the poisoned person to a hospital as soon as possible along with the remaining mushroom, so that the doctor can identify the right medicine.”

The toxic Fly Amanita, famous through fairy tales, also known for its psychoactive effect

Looking harmless, being toxic: Death Cap

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�Read about and see more beautiful mushrooms:

www.naturegrid.org. uk.biodiversity/crypfungi.html

�Get mushroom advisory: www.pabb.de/ www.bgbm.org/bgbm/pr/

about/pilze.htm www.pilzschule.de/html/

berlin-brandenbg_.html

Mushroom Websites

Poison emergency call in Berlin: 0 (30) 19240