Dicing with death.

Amanita are large fungi and dangerous for the non-expert mushroom gatherer. Some, like Amanaita vaginata and Amanita fulva are said to be edible, even good to eat. Others will either make you very ill or will kill you without mercy. Their common names should be enough to warn you off: both Amanita virosa, the Destroying Angel, and Amanita phalloides, the Death Cap, are deadly poisonous.

This quintessential and striking toadstool Amanita muscaria, the Fly Agaric, is merely dangerously poisonous. It contains small amounts of the toxin muscarine, which causes sweat-inducing poisoning. It also contains the alkaloids muscimol, ibotenic acid and muscazone, which cause psychotropic poisoning, which may be severe in some cases, although deaths are very rare.

The fly agaric was first described by the great Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in 1753, as Agaricus muscarius, the epithet deriving from the Latin ‘musca’, or ‘fly’, apparently referring to its use in parts of Europe as an insecticide, when crushed in milk for attracting and killing flies. Its hallucinogenic properties have been well-known for centuries and the species has a long history of use in religious and shamanistic rituals, especially in Siberia.