Death cap (Amanita phalloides) is a deadly poisonous mushroom!
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Friends, hello! In this video I will tell you about a mushroom that every person who collects wild mushrooms should know - this is the deadly poisonous Death Cap (Amanita phalloides). Without understanding what the Death Cap is, you can not go to the forest, because 90% of fatal cases of mushroom poisoning are caused by eating this type of mushroom. The Death Cap is a common mushroom, in some years it appears very massively. It forms an ectomycorrhiza with various types of trees, such as birch, oak, hazel, linden, pine, spruce and beech, it prefers deciduous, mixed and then coniferous forests, so it can be found in almost every forest in Ukraine, especially in Poliesie. Death cap appears sometimes in July, but most often in August and bears fruit until frost.
The name Death cap does not quite match the appearance of this mushroom, the name Green Fly Agaric is more suitable for it, since most often the cap is painted in various shades of green. Its cap is from 5 to 15 cm in diameter, olive or greenish-gray in color, from hemispherical to flat, with a smooth edge and a silky surface, on young caps there may be large remnants of a white cover. In wet weather, the cap is sticky, and often after rain, the color along the edges becomes lighter. The plates are white, free and soft. The stem is from 8 to 16 cm long and 1-2 cm in diameter, cylindrical, with a tuberous thickening at the base, which resembles a sac, the so-called volva. The volva is well defined, free, lobed and saccular, white, and pale yellowish-greenish inside. The stem is lighter in color than the cap or whitish, often covered with a moire pattern, less often weakly scaly. The remains of the private cover are visible on the stem in the form of a wide, hanging skirt-shaped and thin ring, white or yellowish. The pulp is white, does not change color when damaged, dense and brittle, with a weak taste and smell in young fruiting bodies, with age the smell becomes cloyingly sweet, reminiscent of honey. Cooked mushrooms have a pleasant mushroom taste, according to legend, the Roman Emperor Claudius was poisoned by the Death Cap, he liked the dish of these mushrooms so much that he ordered them to be always served at the imperial table. But as you understand, Claudius was not able to taste these mushrooms again, because in most cases of poisoning with the Death Cap ends in death from liver or kidney failure, or from cardiac arrest. The toxins of the Death Cap are not subject to boiling and are not destroyed by heat treatment. The lethal dose of this mushroom for an adult is 30 grams, or a quarter of the cap. The particular danger of the Death Cap is that the symptoms of poisoning occur in the period from 6 to 24 hours or more, i.e. when all the toxins have already been absorbed in the digestive tract and irreversible consequences have already begun in the body. Modern medicine is practically powerless in cases of such poisoning, but the sooner medical assistance is provided, the higher the chances of survival, which is why it is very important to call an ambulance at the first symptoms of poisoning. Unfortunately, even in case of survival, a person remains disabled for life from the consequences of poisoning. In this regard, I want to warn all mushroom pickers who, without understanding mushrooms, use "old-fashioned" methods of checking the toxicity of mushrooms, such as boiling with onions, silver spoons and other nonsense - forget about all this, because these are pure myths and they do not work! The main and only factor in your safety is knowledge and the ability to distinguish between types of mushrooms. Death cap can have a very changeable appearance - from almost white to green-gray, which is why it is confused with different types of mushrooms. When young, the Death Cap resembles an egg, which is why there is a risk of confusion with puffballs and common stinkhorn. To avoid this, all the "eggs" must be cut open. In the case of the Death Cap, the structure of the lamellar mushroom will be visible in the cut. Most often, the Death Cap is confused with green russula, and there is a separate video on the channel about how to distinguish them, which you can find at the link in the description of this video • Зелёная сыроежка vs Бледная поганка. Как о... It is also possible to confuse it with the greenfinch, which differs from the Death Cap by the absence of a tuberous thickening with a volva and a yellow-green color of the pulp. It is also often confused with champignons, the main difference from which is the unchanging white color of the pulp in the Death Cap and the presence of a tuberous thickening with a volva, which is often deeply immersed in the soil, and when cutting the mushroom, it can remain unnoticed in the ground. This is why, when collecting lamellar mushrooms, they must be completely pulled out of the ground, and not cut off.