Smurfs and gnomes and scary ‘shrooms
Island Wild for Fri. Oct. 30, 2009

The eye-popping Fly Agaric mushroom creates a great Halloween vignette as a gnome umbrella or spider floor. Photo Jim Dubois.

This most notorious Amanita (muscaria) gained fame as the classic toadstool of Alice in Wonderland. Photo Jim Dubois.

On October 31st, scores of little spooks and goblins will be out ringing doorbells during the annual Halloween candy blitz. It’s a fun season, and imaginations run wild with decorations of spiders, webs, ghosts, witches, and other scary props.

It’s also a good time to remember that some of planet Earth’s most frightening organisms are not made of plastic; they’re living out in the lawn, alongside a favourite nature trail or even in a local schoolyard.

Picture a blood-red flying saucer with white windows; or a red umbrella coated with pale patches. Of all the mushroom photos and enquiries that arrive in my inbox, none are more plentiful than the bright red and gravely toxic Fly Agaric (Amanita muscaria).

Once upon a time, this mushroom found favour as an insecticide, crushed in a saucer of milk to attract flies, which became stupefied and drowned, thus the common names: Fly Agaric or Fly Amanita.

This most notorious Amanita first gained fame as the classic toadstool of Alice in Wonderland, and then a whole new generation became fans when it was chosen as the shape of the puffy-roofed Smurf house.

Every October, as if on cue, this eye-popping and unmistakable late-fruiting fungus springs up out of the ground to delight and fascinate mushroom enthusiasts and curious passers-by alike. Whether in green grass or on the woodland floor, it’s virtually impossible to miss the shocking stop-sign colouration.


Amanita muscaria is a gilled mushroom coloured deep red (sometimes orange-red) with a convex to flat cap often sprinkled with flaky white patches (of veil remnant). In its early stages, this species emerges as a rounded button-top, soon growing to a very large, flattened saucer-shape up to 25 cm (10 in) across.

Although this species is distinct and easy to identify, one way to verify is to make a spore print. Place a mushroom cap (stem removed) gill-side down on a piece of black art paper and cover with a glass bowl for several hours or overnight.

The microscopic white dust-like particles that fall from the gills are known as spores – the fungus’s reproductive parts. And while Amanita muscaria produces white spores, other species produce spores of different colours.

This brightly coloured beauty is arguably the most famous of all toxic mushrooms, and the Amanita family includes the most deadly wild mushrooms in the world. Amanita virosa is the main cause of fatalities, but many other members of the genus are poisonous to some degree.

Incredibly, poisonings from ingesting Amanita muscaria or other Amanitas are very common, despite the fact that mycologists stress no species of genus Amanita should ever be consumed.

Fungophobes can rest assured that toxic fungi species can actually be fun…especially at Halloween. Just don’t eat them…don’t even nibble.

E-mail Christine at: wildernesswest@shaw.ca