Deadly Galerina
Can killGalerina marginata · also called funeral bell
A small brown mushroom on wood that contains the same amatoxins as the death cap. It matters enormously to anyone hunting psilocybin mushrooms or honey fungus, both of which it resembles and both of which it grows alongside. Its unremarkable appearance is exactly what makes it dangerous.
Read this before anything else
- Never eat a wild mushroom identified by a website or an app.That includes this one. These tools narrow possibilities; they cannot see your mushroom, its base, its smell or its habitat, and the difference between a meal and a liver transplant is sometimes a feature buried in the soil.
- Get it confirmed in person by an experienced local forager or a mycological society. Most regions have one, most run free identification sessions, and they will look at the actual specimen.
- Dig, do not pull. The cup at the base of a death cap is often underground. Pulling the mushroom leaves the most important feature in the soil.
- If someone has eaten a wild mushroom and feels unwell, call poison control now — in the US, 1-800-222-1222. Do not wait for symptoms to worsen. Amatoxin poisoning has a false recovery phase, and delayed treatment is what makes it fatal. Save any uneaten pieces for identification.
Quick facts
- If eaten
- Deadly. Contains amatoxins identical to those in the death cap, with the same delayed onset and liver failure. A small quantity is sufficient.
- Under the cap
- gills
- Spore print
- rust, brown
- Cap
- Small, tawny to rusty brown, sticky when damp and fading to buff as it dries.
- Stem
- Slender, brownish, with a thin ring that is easily lost, and often a whitish fibrous coating below it.
- Growing on
- wood dead, conifer litter
- Season
- Autumn, and mild spells in winter.
How to identify it
- Rusty brown spore print — take one, because this separates it from most of what it resembles.
- Grows in clusters on dead wood, especially rotting conifer logs.
- Thin ring on the stem, often smudged with rusty spores.
- Small and nondescript, which is why it gets picked by accident.
What it is confused with
One test settles each of these.
Honey fungus has a white spore print. Galerina's is rusty brown. Always take a print before considering anything clustered on wood.
Psilocybe species
Galerina grows in the same habitats as several psilocybin species and has killed people hunting them. A rusty brown print is the warning.