Toxic
Fly agaric
Amanita muscaria
The character that does the work
Red cap with removable white warts, and a bulb with concentric bands rather than a sac.
The specimen sheet, in examination order
01Cap
8 to 20 cm, scarlet to orange, fading with rain, scattered with white or cream wart-like patches that WASH OFF. Deeply grooved at the margin when mature.
02Underside
Free white gills, crowded.
03Stem, and the base
White, with a ring, and at the base a swollen bulb ringed with concentric scaly bands rather than a loose sac.
04Flesh, cut
White, yellowish just under the cap skin.
05Spore print
White to cream
How to take one06Where it grows
With birch, pine and spruce, forming a mycorrhizal partnership with the tree.
When to look
Typically Aug to Dec in the northern hemisphere. Fruiting swings by weeks with rainfall and by a month or more with latitude, so this is when to look rather than when it will be there.
Throughout the northern hemisphere and introduced with plantation conifers to the southern.
What is worth knowing about it
The mushroom of every illustration, and much less lethal than its reputation: deaths are very rare. What it does is unpleasant and genuinely dangerous in its own way, producing confusion, agitation, deep sedation, vomiting and sometimes seizures. It is periodically sold as a legal intoxicant, and the doses circulating are not standardised in any meaningful sense. Its toxins are water-soluble and traditional parboiling reduces them, which is not the same as making it food.
Confused with
- Caesar's mushroom
- Blusher
This page tells you what to check. It does not tell you the mushroom in your hand is that species, and it cannot. If you are not certain, do not eat it. If you have already eaten something and feel unwell, contact a poison centre and keep an uncooked specimen.
Others in this group