The great poisoner

Staying on my fungus theme, I couldn't resist some shots of the 20 or so specimens of Deathcap, Amanita phalloides, that have now come up around one old beech tree at the reserve. I took the opportunity to smell a freshly emerged specimen today and, true to the books, it does have a pleasant, faint smell of rose petals. It also has a beautiful delicate olive-green colour. It is difficult to think of it as being so deadly, not quite the most toxic toadstool to be found in the UK, but the one that has been responsible for almost all of the fatalities. Just half a cap is enough to kill an adult in a horrible long-drawn-out way. Thankfully, fatalities in this country have declined in the last 20 or 30 years, probably because as a nation we are really not very adventurous collecting wild mushrooms. In central Europe, it is still a significant killer.