Description and photo of a mushroom pale toadstool: how does it look and how to distinguish it?

Mushroom pale toadstool is one of the most dangerous poisonous representatives of the forest flora. You cannot pick these mushrooms. They can cause poisoning even with short-term contact with other types of edible mushrooms. Poisons are quickly absorbed by hats and legs of edible types. Therefore, you need to know what a pale toadstool looks like and how to distinguish it from similar edible mushrooms. All this can be learned from the proposed material.

Description of the mushroom pale toadstool where it grows (with photo)

Description of the mushroom pale toadstool gives a general idea of ​​the plant. Next, you can read the description of the pale grebe with a photo and remember this mushroom.

Family: Fly agaric (Amanitaceae).

Synonyms: fly agaric green.

Cultural, historical and other interesting information

Pale grebe is the most poisonous of our fly agaric and one of the most poisonous mushrooms in general. Statistics: if about 95% of all known fatal mushroom poisoning is caused by species of the Amanita muscaria, then, in turn, more than 50% of all fatal mushroom poisoning is caused by pale grebe. No. 1 killer mushroom, cleaner than the cannibal shark.

In the world, pale grebe is widespread enough. Her homeland is Europe, from where she in recent decades has penetrated into East Asia, Africa, both Americas and even Australia and New Zealand. There are many different places where pale grebe grows, although it is not so common.

Mycorrhizal northern and mid-European European wood partners of the pale grebe are oak, linden, hazel, birch, maple, elm, beech, and hornbeam, and in the southern regions there is also chestnut. Quite rarely, but, nevertheless, successfully toadstool is able to form mycorrhiza with pine and spruce. It is noteworthy that in new places in the process of introduction, the pale grebe finds new, previously uncharacteristic partners for it. For example, in coastal California A. phalloides mastered tsugu (coniferous tree) and virgin oak, in Iran - hazelnuts, in Tanzania and Algeria - eucalyptus, in New Zealand - various species of myrtle tree.

The following is a pale grebe in the photo of different variations of the mushroom in the color of the hat:

At the end of the 19th century, the famous American mycologist Charles Peck announced the discovery of a European species A. phalloides in North America. However, in 1918, these samples were tested and identified by mycologist Professor Atkinson (Cornell University) as a similar species of A.brunnescens. The question of the transcontinentality of the pale grebe seems to have been closed, but in the 1970s it suddenly became clear that the undoubted European pale grebe had colonized both the eastern and western North American coasts, having moved from Europe along with seedlings of chestnuts that had become popular then. In general, the pale grebe, having taken a start in Europe, captured the entire Northern Hemisphere in exactly this way - along with seedlings and timber.She took about 50 years to do everything. Together with oak seedlings, she penetrated into Australia and South America (green round dances around the grown oak trees “delighted the eye” for a long time in Melbourne and Canberra, as well as in Uruguay, Argentina and Chile, until a few years later the mushrooms found new mycorrhiza partners and started procession across the continents). It has been reliably established that, with pine seedlings, a pale toadstool “jumped” to Tanzania and South Africa, where it quickly mastered the local oaks and poplars.

All this indicates a very high invasive potential of pale grebe, which for some reason (warming? .. activity of phytodesigners? ..) has become more and more manifest recently.

Since ancient times, people have been poisoned by a pale grebe both by accident and by malice. Perhaps the earliest known case of poisonous grebe poisoning (eaten by mistake instead of a Caesar mushroom) can be considered the death of the wife and children of the great playwright of antiquity Euripides.

History has brought to us many facts and the deliberate “persecution” of famous personalities by poisonous mushrooms to eliminate them from the political or even religious arena. Apparently, most of them are accounted for by a pale toadstool. The “lucky ones” most often mentioned in this regard are the Roman emperor Claudius and Pope Clement VII.

What poisonous mushrooms look like a pale toadstool in the photo: how to distinguish them?

Consider what a pale toadstool looks like: an egg-shaped to flat-convex hat, with an open prostrate, slimy or dry, 6-12 cm in diameter, greenish to yellowish-olive, usually with dark fibers grown into the skin, rarely almost white or dark olive brown. White flaky warts are scattered on the surface of the hat at a young age, which disappear in adult fruiting bodies or after rain. The pulp is white, quite thin. The plates are wide, white. Leg 10-15 X 1.5-2 cm, cylindrical with a tuberoid-expanded base, white, yellowish or greenish, smooth or with scales. The Volvo is cup-shaped, wide, free (not edged by the edges to the pedicle, as, for example, in the red fly agaric), white, usually torn at the top into 3-4 parts (lobes). The ring is white, slightly striped above, usually erect, in the upper part of the leg. The smell and taste (at least in young mushrooms) are very pleasant. Old mushrooms smell sweetish-unpleasant, like crushed insects.

The following shows how the pale grebe looks in the photo, illustrating various forms:

Pale grebe by our standards is quite thermophilic and prefers deciduous and broad-leaved forests. The favorite habitat of this fungus in the European part of Russia is limes and oak groves. Green fly agaric is found throughout the taiga zone, but in the south it still feels better. The most comfortable conditions for pale toadstools are the forest-steppe zone (for example, the Volga region, Ukraine, etc.). On the other hand, the thermophilicity of the toadstool leads to the fact that in our places it definitely gravitates toward forest suburbs and summer cottages, "catching" additional crumbs of heat from cities and other human settlements.

The mushroom bears fruit, a poisonous pale toadstool from July to early October.

In our forests at a young age, poisonous toadstools can be confused with edible fly agaric floats and some mushrooms. There are known cases of collecting pale grebe instead of russula with green hats or row of greenfinch, when the pale grebe was cut very high, just under the hat, which made it impossible to find a ring and a bag when sorting mushrooms at home. It is believed that it can be confused with an adult champignon and even an umbrella. How to distinguish pale toadstool from completely edible species of mushrooms and get this dangerous mushroom in a basket?

We will consider further, but for now it is proposed to look at the poisonous pale grebe in the photo:

The pale toadstool has a white (albino) form, when the entire mushroom is entirely white.In this case, it is very difficult to distinguish from the deadly poisonous smelly fly agaric (Amanita virosa).

In the world, however, is a pale toadstool with which they are not confused. This is explained, on the one hand, by a rather low culture of mushroom harvesting, which was mixed up with great enthusiasm, and, on the other hand, by the fact that pale grebe is a young immigrant who has not yet been sufficiently studied by local mushroom pickers. For example, recently there have been reports of cases of fatal poisonous grebe poisoning among immigrants from South and Southeast Asia who settled in Australia and on the west coast of the United States. Poor Asians confuse a scary fly agaric never seen before with their beloved straw mushroom (Volvariella volvacea, widely cultivated in Asia). A few years ago, BBC showed a story filmed in Oregon, where four embarrassed members of a similar Korean family managed to save their lives through a liver transplant. Of the seven people who died from a pale toadstool between 1991 and 1998 in Canberra (Australia), six were former Laos citizens.

Foreign novice mushroom pickers often confuse young, not yet tearing the common veil fruit bodies of a pale toadstool with edible raincoats, and mature fruiting bodies with edible local species of fly agarics (e.g., American A. lanei) or green-colored russula and row rows.

How is pale toadstool used in homeopathy?

The fruit bodies of a pale toadstool contain toxic bicyclic polypeptides based on the indole ring. Under the influence of pale toadstool toxins, ATP synthesis is inhibited, lysosomes, microsomes, and ribosomes of cells are destroyed. As a result of a violation of the biosynthesis of protein, phospholipids, glycogen, necrosis and fatty degeneration of the liver develop, leading to death. Toxins are found in all parts of the fungus, even in spores and mycelium. The following describes how pale grebe is used in homeopathy to treat certain complex diseases.

A unique complex of substances has been isolated from the pale grebe, which neutralizes the poisons of both the palest grebe and the smelly fly agaric. Currently, an antidote is being developed on its basis.

In the Middle Ages, cholera was treated with small doses of pale toadstool.

Currently, ultra-low doses of alcoholic infusion are used in homeopathy for the following diseases: cholera; chorea; diphtheria; gastritis, severe spasmodic contractions of the stomach, vomiting; lockjaw; Crumpy's syndrome; tenesmus (frequent, painless); doubt, lethargy; cephalgia; vertigo; collapse; visual disturbances, muscle damage to the eyeball; the effects of suppression of secretions; thirst with desire for cold water.

Symptoms and signs of pale grebe poisoning

The fungus is deadly poisonous, therefore food use is excluded. Unlike a number of other poisonous mushrooms, neither drying nor heat treatment eliminates the toxic effects of pale toadstool poisons. To poison an adult, it is enough to eat about 1/3 of the fruit body of the fungus (about 100 g). Children are especially sensitive to pale toxin toxins, in whom the symptoms of poisoning begin with the jaws and cramps. The main symptoms of pale grebe poisoning appear after 6 hours - two days. Further, other signs of pale toadstool poisoning are added: vomiting begins, muscle pain, intestinal colic, indomitable thirst, cholera-like diarrhea (often with blood). The pulse becomes weak, threadlike, blood pressure decreases, as a rule, loss of consciousness is observed. As a result of liver necrosis and acute cardiovascular failure, in most cases a fatal outcome occurs.