This fungus is held responsible for about 90 per cent of all deaths from fungus poisoning
Death cap, according to the Woodland Trust; half a cap can kill an adult.
Nature · Fungi
Death cap
Fruits July–November · cap 5–15 cm
Amanita phalloides — Amanitaceae (a fungus, not a plant)
The death cap is the deadliest fungus known, and it is responsible for the great majority of fatal mushroom poisonings worldwide. It is a fungus, not a plant: it has no chlorophyll, and feeds by absorbing nutrients while partnering the roots of oak and beech. Half a cap can kill an adult. Its amatoxins are unaffected by cooking, drying or freezing, symptoms are delayed by many hours, and a treacherous apparent recovery follows before the liver fails. It looks, and reportedly tastes, perfectly pleasant.
How to spot them
- ▸Shiny olive-yellow to greenish-bronze cap, 5–15 cm, with fine radiating fibres
- ▸White gills, broad and free of the stem, and a white spore print
- ▸Off-white stem, often faintly banded, with a floppy skirt-like ring
- ▸A white sac-like cup (volva) round the swollen base — usually buried, so the base must be dug up to see it
- ▸Under oak and beech in mixed deciduous woodland, July to November
How to know it
Its toxin, amanitin, blocks RNA polymerase II, so cells stop making protein and the liver and kidneys fail
Death cap — amatoxins are not destroyed by cooking, drying or freezing.
Symptoms begin only six to twenty-four hours after eating, and are followed by a deceptive apparent recovery
Death cap — the delay is what makes it so lethal.
A shiny olive-bronze cap, white free gills, a floppy ring and a buried white sac at the base
Death cap — the volva must be dug up to be seen, which is why it is so often missed.
Agrippina is said to have used its juice to murder her husband, the Emperor Claudius
Death cap.
Mycorrhizal with oak and beech, it has been carried around the world on the roots of planted trees
Death cap — now established in North America and Australia.
At the button stage it can be mistaken for an edible species, which is how most victims are poisoned
Death cap.
Quick-fire facts
- •A fungus, not a plant — fungi form their own kingdom and are more closely related to animals than to plants
- •The Woodland Trust states it is responsible for 90 per cent of deaths by fungus, and that half a cap or less can kill
- •The lethal compounds are amatoxins, chiefly α-amanitin, which inhibit RNA polymerase II and so halt protein synthesis
- •Cooking, drying and freezing do not destroy the toxins
- •Onset is delayed by six to twenty-four hours: violent vomiting and diarrhoea, then a false remission, then liver and kidney failure days later
- •Treatment is supportive, with silibinin and N-acetylcysteine used, and liver transplant in the worst cases
- •Ectomycorrhizal with oak and beech; it has spread to North America and Australia with planted trees
- •Emperor Claudius is traditionally said to have been poisoned by his wife Agrippina with death cap juice; Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor, is also often cited
- •Most poisonings come from confusing it with an edible species, especially at the button stage when the cap colour is not yet obvious
- •There is no simple rule — no colour, smell, peeling test or silver-spoon trick — that separates edible fungi from deadly ones
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Sources
- Woodland Trust — Deathcap (Amanita phalloides)
- First Nature — Amanita phalloides — Death Cap