Destroying Angel

Destroying Angel

I’m new to identifying mushrooms, but apparently this is a poisonous mushroom that causes death by liver failure from eating just one. Identifying features: has a smooth white cap (sometimes with a tan tint in the center, like this one), gills, and a drapy skirt-like ring near the cap. The first stage of poisoning is called the incubation stage: 6-12 hours with no symptoms while it takes over without you noticing. Don’t eat white mushrooms!

Eastern North American Destroying Angel, Deadly Amanita, White Death Cap, Angel of Death (Amanita bisporigera)

4 thoughts on “Destroying Angel

  1. Nice, clear photo. Something not to eat. Every year some folks around here die from eating mushrooms. Completely destroyed my appetite for mushrooms unless found at the grocery store! It sure is a pretty thing though.

    • Evidently the kind of amanita you have in the west looks a lot like an edible variety of south asian mushroom, and many of the mushroom poisoning deaths in the U.S. are asian immigrants thinking they’re gathering Paddy-Straw Mushrooms. Where they’re from, there are no poisonous varieties that look similar to the Paddy-Straw Mushroom, so they don’t realize… (That kind of amanita you have in the west is thought to be native to Europe, and came in with imported cork tree seedlings.)

    • I’m glad you were an educated mushroom hunter. Old, not bold is what we want to be in the mushroom department.
      Knowing it’s so deadly makes it not so pretty, somehow…

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