In Yunnan Province (southwestern China) and among indigenous communities in the north of the Philippines, a wild bolete mushroom is well known, called by locals by various names: “jian shou qing” (literally “turns blue in the hand” — because of the rapid blueing when damaged) or “sedesdem.” Its scientific name is Lanmaoa asiatica. When properly cooked, it is a tasty edible mushroom that is sold in markets. But if it is eaten raw or insufficiently boiled, many people begin to experience highly characteristic hallucinations.
People see dozens or even hundreds of tiny human figures (usually 3–30 cm tall). The figures are often brightly dressed, look very realistic and three-dimensional, and behave according to the laws of physics: they walk around obstacles, clamber onto chairs and tables, jump into a bowl of soup and even “swim” in it. In Yunnan hospitals, dozens of such cases are recorded every year; according to some data, about 96 % of patients report specifically “xiao ren ren” — “little people.” Symptoms usually begin after several hours and resolve within 1–5 days, with no fatalities and no serious organ damage.
This phenomenon is called Lilliputian hallucinations (after the tiny inhabitants of the country of Lilliput in “Gulliver's Travels”). It also occurs in other conditions (delirium, alcohol withdrawal syndrome, certain neurological diseases), but extremely rarely. The mushroom provides a relatively stable and reproducible trigger, which makes it valuable for science.
The story goes back to the 1930s. Missionaries in the highlands of Papua New Guinea described “mushroom madness” after consuming local boletes (“nonda”). In the 1960s, Gordon Wasson, Roger Heim and others studied these mushrooms; Albert Hofmann (who discovered LSD and isolated psilocybin) tried to find the active substances but could not. At the time, many concluded that this was more a cultural phenomenon than a chemical one.
In the 1990s, similar reports appeared in China. In 2015, the species was officially described as Lanmaoa asiatica. Domnauer and Dentinger conducted fieldwork in Yunnan and the Philippines (including the first scientific survey of mushrooms of the northern Cordillera), collected samples, interviewed local residents and carried out phylogenetic and genomic analysis of 53 samples of the genus Lanmaoa. It turned out that the Chinese “jian shou qing” and the Philippine “sedesdem” are the same species, L. asiatica. Three geographically distant cultures (China, the Philippines and earlier Papua New Guinea) describe an almost identical effect — a strong argument in favor of a real chemical cause rather than a purely folkloric tradition.
The key result: in the genome of L. asiatica no genes responsible for the biosynthesis of psilocybin, ibotenic acid or other known fungal psychoactive compounds were found. This confirms the hypothesis of a new, as yet unknown metabolite. The researchers also described several new species in the genus Lanmaoa and clarified the evolutionary relationships of the group. The mushroom itself is closer to ordinary boletes (including porcini) than to psilocybin-containing “magic mushrooms” — their evolutionary lineages diverged approximately 150 million years ago.
