The plant that gave us Santa Claus?
Death Cap (Amanita phalloides) is the most poisonous fungus of the Amanitaceae family, growing up to 12cm in height with a cap that may also reach 12cm, in deciduous forest soils throughout Europe. It ranges in colour from light bronze to pale yellow and in some conditions is as white as a field mushroom. The stem is lighter in colour than the cap and generally has a delicate skirt just below the gills, which are white, and a volva at the base of the stem, which looks like an egg shell. The presence of a volva should alert any collector to the likelihood of the fungus being poisonous.
The distinction between toadstools and mushrooms is unhelpful as both words are synonymous and the belief that edible fungi are distinguished by being able to peel the skin is confounded by the fact the Death Cap peels just as easily.
As soon as mankind determined that some fungi were edible, he also discovered that some species were deadly. Euripides, the Greek dramatist records that when at Icarus a family that had gathered fungi from the fields were ‘destroyed by pitiless fate in one day’.
Since classical times there has always been a query over eating mushrooms; Pliny records: ‘What great pleasure then can there be in partaking of a dish of so doubtful a character as this?’ The Romans valued fungi so highly the nobility employed specialist collectors, this, however, did not benefit the emperor Claudius who was supposedly done away with by his wife Agrippina, who, according to Suetonius, ‘…offered to him a mushroom empoisoned knowing that he was greedy for such meats’, which led to his stepson and heir, Nero, mockingly referring to mushrooms as being ‘food for the gods’, in reference to Claudius’ deification.
Death Cap contains Phallin, Amanitin and Phalloidin and is responsible for 90 per cent of fatalities in fungi poisoning and the symptoms usually follow the same course: no discomfort is felt for up to twelve hours after consumption, followed by intense abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhea and extreme thirst; the nervous system is paralysed, the liver degenerates, delirium and death follow.
There are five other members of this family A. verna, ‘Fool’s Mushroom; A. virosa, ‘Destroying Angel’; A. mappa, ‘False Death Cap’; A. patheris, ‘Panther Cap’ or ‘False Blusher’; and A. muscaria, ‘Fly Agaric’, this latter fungi is so named because of its ability to repel flies and bed bugs. It is the toadstool of fairy tales, having a bright scarlet or orange cap that has concentric white dots. According to Scandinavian tradition it was the cause of the ‘berserker’ warrior and is consumed by the Siberian shamen to achieve spiritual awareness and is said to account for the notion of flying reindeers and Santa Claus.
It is essential to treat all members of this family as dangerous and avoid collecting them.
Interestingly, rabbits and slugs are immune and feast voraciously.
Next week………….. Edible fungi
