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Deadly☠️ To avoid

🍄 Death Cap

Amanita phalloides · Amanitaceae

🌳 Temperate Europe🍁 North America
🧠 To remember it“Olive green, volva in a pouch”—never identify an amanita without digging up the entire base of the stem.
Death Cap — Amanita phalloides

🔍 Identify it without mistakes

Responsible for the vast majority of mushroom-related deaths in Europe. Olive-green to yellowish-green cap, often streaked with radial fibrils, white gills and stem, membranous sac-like volva at the base—a ordinary-looking mushroom, sometimes mistaken for an edible russula or knight mushroom by inexperienced foragers. A single cap can kill an adult.

  1. olive-green to yellowish-green cap, sometimes almost whitish, smooth to slightly fibrillose surface
  2. gills white, crowded, free (not attached to the stem)
  3. persistent membranous ring on the stem
  4. white sac-like volva enclosing the base of the stem, often buried—ALWAYS DIG IT UP, never cut the stem at ground level
Sizecap 5-15 cm, stem 8-15 cm
Floweringsummer-autumn
Habitatbroadleaf forests, especially under oaks and chestnuts, calcicolous to acidic soils

⚠️ Not to be confused with

Edible green russulas (Greencracked Brittlegill) (Russula virescens)none for the russula, dangerous confusion

To tell them apart: the russula has neither a ring nor a volva at the base of the stem, and its gills snap cleanly (brittle), unlike the pliable gills of the death cap

St. George's mushroom (when young, due to lack of experience) (Calocybe gambosa)none for the St. George's mushroom, rare but reported confusion

To tell them apart: St. George's mushroom grows in spring in fairy rings on lawns, never with a sac-like volva at the base

☠️ What kills

nomAmatoxins (mainly alpha-amanitin), heat-stable and resistant to cooking, drying, and freezing
dose letale estimeeabout 0.1 mg/kg body weight; a single medium-sized cap (30-50 g) contains enough amatoxins to kill an adult (Toxinz, StatPearls, approx)
delai6 to 24 hours after ingestion—it's this long delay, far longer than for ordinary gastrointestinal poisonings, that makes the death cap so dangerous: a false recovery between 24 and 48 hours masks ongoing liver damage
symptomesphase 1 (6-24h): violent severe vomiting and cholera-like diarrhea; phase 2 (24-48h): misleading improvement; phase 3 (48-96h): acute liver failure, sometimes kidney failure, which can lead to death or require an emergency liver transplant
antidoteno universally validated antidote; silibinin (milk thistle extract) and N-acetylcysteine are used as supportive care in specialized ICUs, with liver transplantation as a last resort in the most severe cases
morts documenteesyes, very numerous—the death cap causes the highest number of mushroom poisoning deaths in Europe every year according to poison control centers

First steps : Call the poison control center IMMEDIATELY, even in the absence of symptoms, as soon as you have any doubt about the identification of a consumed mushroom—every hour counts before liver damage sets in. Do not induce vomiting. You must keep a whole mushroom (uncooked if possible, with the stem and base intact) for formal identification by a mycologist or laboratory.

Sources (4)

No entry replaces a certain identification in the field, or medical advice. When in doubt: don't eat it. If ingestion is suspected: poison control or 112/911.