3-year-old Victoria boy dies from poisonous 'death cap' mushroom

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/britis...oned-1.3802245


very sad!

That is a tragic tale indeed. What an awful thing to have happen to one's child. Amanita Ocreata (section: Phalloides) can be such a pretty mushroom but it is utterly deadly. A few years back I found this gorgeous specimen at the Whistler 'parkhurt' ghost logging camp. It was shining in the sun, all by itself.

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All wild mushrooms can be eaten... Some more than once.

Very sad indeed.

Wow, that amanita could easily be mistaken for a pine mushroom.

I've been paying close attention to this story because I like to pick mushrooms.
The death cap amanita is a very close lookalike of the paddy straw mushroom, which is a popular edible in parts of Asia, especially Vietnam.
The paddy straw mushroom and death cap have natural ranges which don't overlap.
The boy's family was familiar with the paddy straw mushroom. They saw death caps growing, believed that they were paddy straw mushrooms, took them home, cooked them and ate them. All got sick, but only the boy died (low body mass = smaller amount of toxin to give lethal dose).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volvariella_volvacea

The key to knowing these deadly Amanitas is the 'veil' of filamentous tissue at the bottom of the stalk that the mushroom emerges from. This gave rise to the nickname 'Destroying Angel'. The tissue really can look like a veil around the mushroom, depending on when you see it.

When I worked in the UK from about 2000 to 2004, there were a surprising number of Amanita poisonings there, and several fatalities each year.

very good fungi ID sites

http://www.mykoweb.com/CAF/species/Amanita_ocreata.html

and here from UBC. This site really shows the variability of the Death Cap mushroom, which is why it's so dangerous. Very easy for it to look like an edible white mushroom.

http://linnet.geog.ubc.ca/ShowDBImag...a%20phalloides

Pine mushrooms have a very distinct smell which is difficult to describe but is unmistakeable.