Destroying Angel

Amanita virosa

Coniferous forests, mature spruce forests, pine forests with an admixture of spruce. Summer, autumn.

Fruiting bodies large. Cap grows up to 10 cm across, acutely conical, flattened when old but with a conspicuous, pointed umbo, white, matt, surface smooth. Gills white, free. Stem 8-17x1–2 cm, white, thickening downwards, with an inconspicuous, sometimes ragged, falling-off ring, the base enclosed in a large, loose, non-adnate white volva. Flesh thick, white, smelling of rotten potatoes and stale radishes. Characteristic features: spores round, amyloid, the fungus turns yellow with KOH solution. Grows mostly singly, among mosses, in old-growth forests. Deadly poisonous; 6 poisonous substances (polypeptides) have been isolated. In toxicity it is not inferior to the death cap.