My thanks to all who have commented in the wake of my initial question about this topic, and also my apologies for the delay in thanking them. My one extenuation is that I am having big troubles with my laptop and have to post messages from my pad, which is tedious, and the more so since it applies some automatic correction program that on the one hand lacks common words and on the other has some weird vocabulary that corrects correct words to bizarre things that don't exist in the language, and I can't find out how to turn it off.
Anyway, it sounds like an investigation in the Flora of various countries about where the Amanita and other candidates for soma grow is needed. Wasson's arguments for the mushroom include some that assume the Vedic poets observed it growing, knew its physical appearance. But in the article by him that was attached he envisaged it might have been procured by trade from the forest belt, many thousands of miles to the North of the subcontinent, at the end of which journey the plants would little resemble their original, fresh form.
(By the way, if anyone has experienced the problem with the weird and apparently irremovable autocorrection, which works on both Gmail and Yahoo, and has fixed it, I would be extravagantly grateful if you contacted me privately, off the list.)
Thanks again,
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