Foragers have been warned to be on their guard against a mushroom that looks and reportedly tastes similar to an edible species but contains a powerful hallucinogen that can cause severe poisoning, after several people were hospitalised following misidentification.
The warning concerns the species Amanita muscaria, the classic red-and-white spotted toadstool of fairy tales, which contains muscimol and ibotenic acid, compounds that produce hallucinations, delirium and, in high doses, seizures and coma. Unlike the deadly Amanita phalloides, the death cap, A. muscaria is rarely fatal, but its effects can be extremely distressing and medically serious.
The warning was prompted by an increase in poisonings that experts attribute to the growing popularity of foraging, which has introduced large numbers of inexperienced people to an activity that requires careful knowledge. Social media has compounded the problem by spreading misinformation about how to identify safe mushrooms and by glamourising foraging without emphasising the risks.
The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, which runs the UK's national fungus identification service, said it had seen a sharp increase in enquiries about Amanita muscaria and urged foragers to follow the basic rule of mushroom identification: if you cannot identify a specimen to species level with absolute confidence, do not eat it.
The warning also noted that some people deliberately consume Amanita muscaria for its psychoactive effects, a practice that experts describe as particularly dangerous because the concentration of active compounds varies widely between specimens, making dosing impossible to control. Several countries, including Australia and Sweden, classify the mushroom's active compounds as controlled substances.
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