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Deadly☠️ To avoid

🍄 Fool's webcap

Cortinarius orellanus · Cortinariaceae

🌳 Temperate Europe
🧠 To remember it“Cobweb veil, poison waiting to derail” — the young mushroom's cortina warns you of a genus to avoid entirely.
Fool's webcap — Cortinarius orellanus

🔍 Identify it without mistakes

A small orange-brown forest mushroom whose toxicity, one of the most insidious in the fungal kingdom, sometimes only manifests 2 to 3 weeks after the meal — such a long delay that linking it to the mushroom you ate is often difficult, severely delaying the diagnosis of kidney failure.

  1. orange-brown to reddish-brown cap, color reminiscent of annatto (natural dye), finely fibrillose surface
  2. orange-rust gills at maturity, attached to the stem
  3. cortina (fine cobweb-like veil) connecting the cap margin to the stem in young specimens, characteristic of the genus Cortinarius
  4. fibrillose stem, without a distinct ring or volva
Sizecap 3-8 cm, stem 4-8 cm
Floweringsummer-autumn
Habitatdeciduous forests, especially under oaks, acidic to neutral soils

⚠️ Not to be confused with

Chanterelle (Cantharellus cibarius)none for the chanterelle, dangerous mix-up reported

To tell them apart: chanterelles have thick, forked ridges under the cap (not true gills) and a uniform egg-yellow color, without the cobweb-like cortina characteristic of webcaps

Other edible webcaps (Cortinarius spp.)the genus Cortinarius includes many toxic species or species with uncertain identification

To tell them apart: no reliable distinction without advanced mycological expertise; safety rule: no webcap should ever be eaten by an amateur, as the entire genus carries a risk

☠️ What kills

nomOrellanine (very delayed-action nephrotoxin)
dose letale estimeea few mushrooms are enough to cause severe kidney failure; the precise lethal dose remains poorly established due to the very long onset delay (approx)
delai2 to 21 days (typically 2 to 3 weeks) — one of the longest latency periods known in fungal toxicology
symptomesafter the latency period: intense thirst, headaches, lower back pain, followed by progressive kidney failure that can become irreversible
antidoteno specific antidote; kidney dialysis necessary in severe cases, kidney transplant sometimes essential in cases of end-stage renal failure
morts documenteesyes — several cases of permanent kidney failure and deaths documented in Europe, notably during a mass poisoning in France in the 1970s that brought the toxicity of this mushroom to light

First steps : Seek emergency medical help immediately if intense thirst or lower back pain appears in the weeks following a wild mushroom harvest, even if the meal seemed harmless at the time. Call a poison control center if you have any doubt about a webcap harvest. If possible, keep a dried sample of the consumed mushrooms, which will be useful for analysis even weeks later.

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.