False toadstool. Pale toadstool (photo)
The most toxic among all representatives of the mushroom kingdom is pale grebe. It belongs to the family of fly agaric, the Amanite family. Although poisoning with this fungus is not so common, mortality can still reach 90% in some cases. That is why it is necessary to take a closer look at the pale grebe.
The fruiting body of the pale toadstool is hat-legged. In young mushrooms, the body is completely hidden under the film, having an ovoid shape. On the hat at this stage of growth there are remains of a flaky coverlet. The color of the hat at the beginning of the development of an olive or greenish hue, then the color becomes lighter. Sometimes there are pale toadstools with a completely white hat. The hat can reach 15 cm. As it grows, it flattenes, sometimes with the edges turned to the top. The pulp is white with a pleasant mushroom aroma that does not change color when pressed.
The leg of a pale toadstool reaches a height of 15 cm in mature mushrooms, remaining thin (only 1-2 cm). In young mushrooms, it seems thickened. It has a white sack-shaped Volvo, a white durable ring, either erect or hanging. The Volvo itself is wide, free, cupped, white, often found torn and immersed in the soil. The color of the legs is white, sometimes with beautiful stains in the color of the hat. The plates are frequent, lanceolate, wide, free, white. The spores are also white.
This type of mushroom is often confused with floats, young forest mushrooms. However, they can be distinguished by the absence of a ring on the leg of a pale toadstool. In young champignons, the plates are pink and then lilac. In a pale toadstool, they always remain white. There is also some similarity with rows and russula. It is possible to determine the edibility of the fungus by the absence of a vulvar ring on the leg. But caution will be dictated by the following principle: it is better to lose the opportunity to taste a dozen floats, mushrooms, russula than die, having tasted only one toadstool.
Pale grebe poisoning is not exaggeratedly fatal! The whole problem is that the first signs of poisoning that has entered into force can occur much later than eating. The insidiousness of the pale toadstool is comparable only to the insidiousness of the poison of gyurza. Penetrating into the human body, toxic substances begin deadly irreversible destruction 10-30 hours after poisoning. It can all start with a regular headache. But subsequently, impaired vision, burning pains in the stomach, intense thirst, restless state.
Then cramps, cholera-like vomiting and diarrhea join. Sometimes relief comes (a period of false well-being), but by then irreversible changes in the liver, kidneys, heart and spleen occur. When the toxins have already entered the bloodstream (at the onset of symptoms), death usually occurs within 10 days. The lethal effect is so strong that 4 mg is enough for a cat. poison, for a dog - 25, and for a person - 30 mg. However, if you suspect a poisonous grebe poisoning and seek help from specialized institutions in the first hours, the mortality rate decreases to 50%. The poisonous mushroom pale grebe may have its value in the forest ecosystem. However, while it is not known about it, it is better not to put mushrooms in the basket, in which you are 100% not sure.
Mushroom pictures
Death cap (photo) forms mycorrhiza by deciduous trees, growing in mixed and deciduous forests. Begins to bear fruit in late summer to late September. Pale grebe (pictures) has a strong toxic effect.
When you go mushrooming at the end of summer, after a warm night rain, and in the early morning the earth is smoked with a light fog, and the slanting rays of the sun highlight everything that was hidden by darkness, usually mushrooms begin to come across immediately. Here are the russula with lumps of earth on colorful hats - purple, green, yellow, red. You lift the branches of the fir trees - and here, like here, the boletus is an environment of dry fallen needles. As if dandelions at the spruce roots, foxes turn yellow, and aspen, strong, young, on gray legs, they look very elegant in their dark red velvety berets. And very close, amid the green grass and white trunks of birches, the fly agarics shine with a dazzling red color. Many other grebes come across in the way.
It is wonderful and at the same time mysterious that many edible mushrooms have similar toad-mates. As soon as they begin to appear among good mushrooms, the latter gradually disappear, giving way to them.
In the coniferous forests, next to the cep mushroom, another one, almost copying its appearance, settles - a bitter boletus, or gall mushroom. There are reports of cases of bile fungal poisoning. The bitter substance of the fungus can cause inflammation of the mucous membranes of the stomach and intestines.
In our country in the Caucasus and occasionally in middle lane you can find a satanic mushroom, similar to white, with white flesh, blue or green when cut, and a reddish leg below. Its leg, slightly swollen in the middle and narrowed to the ends (sometimes tuberous below), is yellowish-reddish, with a blood-red mesh pattern over the entire surface. The taste of mushroom is sweet. As early as 1890, O. Lenz, one of the German toxicologists, decided to test the effect of the poison of the satanic mushroom on himself. This risky experience has led to prolonged vomiting and bloody diarrhea.
Later, the toxicity of the satanic fungus was called into question by some famous mycologists, but it was not clear from their work whether they risked checking the toxicity of the satanic fungus, like Lenz, or not, so there is no need to expose themselves to the vain danger of poisoning.
False chanterelles, false honey agarics, false russula, etc. are known. Nevertheless, we have relatively few poisonous mushrooms.
Of all the mushrooms known in the world, the most poisonous is pale grebe. No wonder the Indians of North America called it the "chalice of death." There are three types of it - white (Amanita verna), growing in early spring in forests with soil rich in organic matter (popularly called stinky fly agaric because of the unpleasant odor), yellow (A. citrina) with a yellowish hat is a fly agaric mushroom, often found in heather thickets in the Smolensk, Chernihiv, Novgorod regions, and the Caucasus , southern Ukraine, as well as in Western Europe, North America "Australia, and green (A. palloidea) with a greenish hat.
All three species have white plates on the underside of the cap, a leg thickened at the bottom, like a tuber or bulb, and the remains of a white blanket on the cap and cap (flakes on the surface). These are their common features that make adult pale toadstools easy to distinguish from edible mushrooms, despite the abundance of varieties among them.
The name of the genus Amanita comes from the Greek word "amano" - in ancient times they called one of the mountains of Asia Minor, famous for its abundance of edible mushrooms. Indeed, among amanites there are quite a few edible ones, for example, cesarean mushroom, found in oak forests in the south of France, the German Democratic Republic and the Federal Republic of Germany, Italy, and North America. In our country, it grows in the Caucasus.
It is easy to confuse very young pale grebes with champignon, however, in champignon, in contrast to them, plates are never white (at first they are pink, and then gradually darken, becoming almost black). Pale grebes are very similar to both an umbrella mushroom and green russula (although russula never has any residue left over on the leg and hat and leg without thickening below). The taste of pale toadstools is sweet, while the taste of green toadstools is sweet. And in mushroom dish this deadly poisonous mushroom cannot be distinguished from good mushrooms. Therefore, poisoning happens quite often and in 90% ends in death. They are especially often observed in August, when there is a massive collection of good mushrooms and children taking part in this event, who are not able to distinguish edible mushrooms from poisonous ones.
In the book of N. I. Orlov, “Edible and Poisonous Mushrooms” (M., 1953), mass poisoning of children in an orphanage near the city of Bordeaux (France) is described: they ate at breakfast a dish of pale grebes mistaken for mushrooms. The same author talks about the tragedy that broke out in one of the French restaurants. A group of 23 people had breakfast in the morning with mushrooms cooked in sauce. By dinner, everyone again gathered at the table completely healthy (the first signs of pale grebe poisoning appear at the earliest after 7, and at the latest - after 40 hours) and someone from the company joked cheerfully: "If you poisoned yourself with mushrooms in the morning, then we will die all together." None of them suspected how close the joke was to the truth. Disaster struck at night. Of the 23 people, nine died.
1. Toadstool white. 2. Toadstool green. 3. Toadstool yellow
As far back as 1891, experimental studies of pale toadstool were undertaken. German toxicologist R. Cobert found that water and salt extracts from it have a strong hemolytic effect. The poison destroyed the red blood balls of many animals even in very small concentrations (at a dilution of 1: 125 per dry matter). Cobert was at first mistaken in deciding that he was dealing with one poison, which he called the phallin. He found that fallin decomposes on heating and loses activity in the presence of weak acids and enzymes. However, the venom of the pale toadstool was resistant and persisted with prolonged boiling. It was not destroyed by drying (oxidation by atmospheric oxygen), alcohol, or vinegar.
German scientists Abel and Ford in 1906 - 1914 found in a pale toadstool two more toxic substances - amanitagemolysin and amanitatoxin. The first was similar to Cobert's fallin and turned out to be a nitrogenous glycoside containing pentose sugar, the second was resistant to heat and did not break down in the stomach. He withstood long boiling, not dissolving while in water and remaining in the tissues of the fungus. The activity of the poison was significantly weakened when exposed to alkalis. The poison was not neutralized by tannin or coffee, nor was it adsorbed by activated carbon. Its toxic effect was so strong that 4 milligrams was enough to kill a cat, 25 milligrams a dog, and 30 milligrams was a lethal dose for a person of average weight.
In 1937, German toxicologists Linen and Wiland discovered three component compounds in amanitatoxin, and one of them was obtained in crystalline form. They called this substance phalloidin. Phalloidin was neutral, did not give reactions characteristic of alkaloids and was sparingly soluble. A mouse weighing 16 - 20 grams perished with the introduction of only 10 gamma of this substance (1 gamma - ten thousandth of a gram). The chemical nature of the second and third components of amanitatoxin has not yet been established. One of the poisons, called amanitine, is highly toxic. Working with him during biochemical analyzes causes irritation of the mucous membranes of the eyes and purulent dermatitis.
Poisonous substances are distributed unevenly in the pale grebe. Most of them are in the surface layer of the cap. Tuberoid thickening, flakes, flesh of the cap and spores of the fungus also contain a significant amount of poisons.
The concentration of poisons in the fungus varies by month, perhaps it is different in different years and depends on the growing conditions of the fungus, weather, air temperature, etc.
In Western Europe, and in our country in the Moscow region, ovoid amanita (A. ovoidea) is found. Her hat is first ovoid in shape, then straightens and the plates gradually turn yellow. In Transcaucasia, bristly amanite (A. echinocephala) grows with a grayish hat, densely covered with convex, bristly, thick warts and with greenish-yellow plates. In the Moscow region and Transcaucasia, as well as in the middle and southern latitudes of Western Europe, another species is found - silky-shiny amanita (A. nitida) with a white or yellowish, silky-shiny hat and large, subsequently darkening thick pointed warts. All these types of amanite are also poisonous.
The pale grebe (Amanita phalloides), the green variety of which is often called green fly agaric, is the most dangerous poisonous mushroom in our forests. This fungus of the Amanitaceae family, of the Amanita genus, has such a high concentration of phalloidin that all parts are deadly poisonous to it. Even a small piece of pale toadstool can lead to a tragic ending. When cooking, drying and other treatments, the poison does not lose its strength.
Everyone knows how pale grebe looks. However, every year a lot of people get poisoned in this hospital in very serious condition. poisonous mushroom. The fact is that the pale grebe is sometimes disguised as delicious edible mushrooms. For example, it is easy to confuse it with some mushrooms, russula, floats and rows. The victims are those people who buy appetizing-looking mushroom-shaped homemade preparations.
Description of the pale toadstool
A hat. The diameter of the cap of a pale toadstool is up to 14 cm. More often, up to 10 cm. Its silky skin has a greenish-olive or grayish-green color. The central part of the cap is often a little darker, and the edges are lighter. The skin is usually smooth, less often visible on it are the scales, which are the remnants of the bedspread. Young mushrooms have a convex cap shape, which, as it grows, becomes flat-convex or outstretched. Hat caps are white. The pulp is white, greenish under the skin. There are pale toadstools of a rarer white form.
Leg. The length of the leg of the pale grebe can be up to 20 cm, the thickness is up to 2 cm. The color of the leg is white, greenish-yellow veins, stains or patterns are clearly visible on it. The foot at the bottom is extended. The pale toadstool has several distinctive features that help to recognize this terrible mushroom.
Mushroom pickers should be guarded by a whitish ring in the upper part of the leg, which can be whole, torn or barely noticeable, similar to flakes. It is formed from a film covering the plates of young pale toadstools. The Volvo cup, torn when three young mushrooms appear on three or four blades, should also scare away. Volvo is at the bottom of the legs (near the ground). The leg does not grow to the Volvo, it seems that it is inserted into it. The color of the outside of the Volvo is whitish, yellowish or greenish. It seems that the sack-shaped cup of Volvo is prepared "for growth."
The worst mushroom in this respect is the pale grebe. It is easy to recognize by the whitish bulb at the end of the leg and a disheveled whitish skirt just below the white hat with ribbed sporangium. Poison is deadly even in scanty amounts (BT Chuvin, “Man in an Extreme Situation”).
Pale grebes are hygrophilous; in rainy weather they massively appear as whole "plantations". In the arid regions of the country, pale grebe is much less common. The fungus often grows in deciduous and mixed forests. But this does not exclude its appearance in conifers. Especially in pine trees, where there is a lot of sphagnum moss.
Pale grebe appears from June. The peak of its growth is observed from the second half of August to mid-September.
Pale Toad Mushrooms
If all the pale toadstools looked “like in the picture,” then there wouldn’t be so many people who put this poisonous mushroom in their basket and then in the pan.
In recent years, a lot of mutant mushrooms come across in the forests .... "Learned" to mask and pale toadstool. Even experienced mushroom pickers sometimes cannot distinguish it from russula, honey agaric or champignon (V. Zhavoronkov “The ABC of safety in emergency situations”).
Russula is green and greenish. The green variety of white grebe is often confused with a very common Russula. The main differences: the absence of a ring on the white leg of russula. Legs of green and greenish russula do not have scales and patterns. At the base of the russula leg there is no Volvo.
Greenfinch. The plates are green in lemon color, and they are white in the pale grebe. Greenfinch is a stocky strong mushroom. The pale grebe is completely different.
Float. The pale white toadstool (fortunately rarer) is easily confused with the float. With these mushrooms there are mistakes even in experienced mushroom pickers. For beginners, the white float is at risk.
Champignon. Pale grebe is sometimes called "false champignon." It is more difficult to deal with young mushrooms.
Amanita smelly (Amanita virosa), or the white grebe, which grows closer to the North, is also a deadly poisonous double mushroom of a pale grebe. In the suburbs it happens a lot in dry years. In the Far East, a white grebe grows in spruce-fir forests. Amanita should not be recalled if there were no similarities between the pale grebe, the amanita, the smelly and the white float.
Fly agaric (Amanita mappa) also resembles a pale grebe. But he has a Volvo attached to the leg and flakes of the parts of the bedspread remaining on the hat. This inedible mushroom previously considered toxic due to the presence of bufotenin toxin in its tissue. Amanita muscaria replenishes the list of double mushrooms double mushrooms, but does not cause any desire to put the mushroom in a basket.
Pale Toad Poisoning
30 g of pale toadstools are considered a lethal dose even for a strong adult, and 1, 5 g is a sufficient amount to end up in a hospital bed.
Having eaten a pale toadstool, a person for many hours does not feel any signs of poisoning. Then he begins to die (V.A. Soloukhin).
The poison causes inhibition of all processes in the cells of the body. The formation of protein is halted. There is a rapid degeneration of organ tissues. The first blow is often taken by the stomach, intestines and liver. Due to repeated vomiting and frequent loose stools, rapid dehydration occurs. Chlorides, calcium, potassium and magnesium are lost. But this is only a small part of all the problems.
Mushroom poison, according to the doctor of medical sciences, professor S.G. Musselius (head of the department of resuscitation and treatment of endotoxicosis of the Medical Center for the Administration of the Mayor and the Government of Moscow), leads to a change in the composition of the blood, a significant deterioration in the condition of the heart, lungs and multiple damage to other important organs. Blood coagulation decreases, therefore, to heavy bleeding. The nervous system is affected, hallucinations occur, human behavior becomes inadequate.
The time from the moment the poisonous grebe gets into the human body until the first signs of poisoning is about 6 - 9 hours. Less often - 10 - 15 hours. In some cases, - 16 - 36 hours. General weakness, malaise appears, cold sweat appears.
The next period is acute gastroenteritis with abdominal pain, nausea, "gushing" vomiting, frequent (up to 25 times a day!) Loose stools, dry mouth, excruciating thirst and other symptoms. This period is characterized by weakness, headache, dizziness, lethargy, increased heart rate and unevenness, and a decrease in blood pressure.
Further, the patient's condition temporarily improves. However, intense damage to the internal organs continues, up to complete degeneration.
The next stage is acute hepatic or hepatic-renal failure. On the 3rd - 5th day, jaundice often appears. Death occurs 5 to 10 days after the onset of poisoning. There are chances to recover, they depend on how quickly measures were taken. It takes up to 1.5 months to restore the health of surviving patients.
Urgent measures for poisoning with a pale toadstool
What if the pale grebe got on a plate, and from it into a person’s stomach? Here is a quick guide to help save someone's life.
Rinse your stomach immediately: drink 5-6 cups of boiled water or a pale pink solution of potassium permanganate, and then press the tongue root with your fingers. Never drink milk. It promotes the absorption of toxins. Take activated charcoal immediately, 2 to 5 tablets (or another sorbent), vitamin C up to one gram and antibiotics (neomycin sulfate, chloramphenicol), as the toxins activate all pathogens in the intestines. At the same time, it is necessary to drink slightly salted water to restore the water-salt balance before the ambulance arrives.
Many believe that alcohol helps with poisoning. This is a dangerous misconception, since alcohol contributes to the rapid spread of toxin in the body (V. Zhavoronkov, “The ABCs of Safety in Emergencies”).
It is best to end the description of the insidiousness of the pale toadstool with the words of V.A. Soloukhina:
I think, for some reason, a pale toadstool is needed if nature created it. Someday, probably, they will recognize its useful side, and it will be a valuable plant. But for now, dear mushroom pickers, beware of the pale grebe.
(Amanita phalloides)
Pale toadstool is considered the most dangerous poisonous mushroom. It belongs to the family of fly agaric and the lamellar group.
No cooking can remove toxins from the pale grebe. The danger of these toxins lies in the fact that they irreversibly and imperceptibly affect humans internal organs within 2 days. It is enough to eat 1/4 of the cap of a pale toadstool so that the poisoning is fatal.
Habitats:
The most common place to grow pale grebe is broadleaf forests - oak groves, birch. But sometimes it can be found in coniferous forests.
The growth period is from June to the most frosts. It always grows in groups, very rarely singly. It grows abundantly on the south side of the forest.
Features:
The color of the hat is white, light green, yellowish-brown-olive, in the center with a silky sheen and darker. In diameter it reaches 7-11 cm. In young mushrooms, the shape of the hat is bell-shaped, in mature ones it is flat-convex. In wet weather, the hat is slimy, rarely with white flakes.
The leg is smooth, tuberoid-thickened at the base. The base is surrounded by a cup-shaped white Volvo. The length of the leg can reach 12 cm, a width of 2 cm. The color of the legs is white, sometimes with a yellow tint. In the middle of the leg there is a white, striped, membranous ring.
The plates are white in color, often and freely located.
Poisonous toxins and signs of poisoning:
Pale toadstool toxins belong to the group of polypeptides. One mushroom is enough to cause fatal poisoning of 3-4 adults. The most dangerous toxins are alpha-amanitine and phalloidin. The lethal dose of phalloidin is 0.02-0.03g.
Obvious signs of poisoning begin to appear after 20-40 hours. Over this period of time, the poisons of the pale toadstool destroy the internal organs of a person, which leads to irreversible consequences. And no treatment methods will return the organs to a state before poisoning. Poisoning with a pale toadstool in 90% of cases leads to death.
Symptoms of poisoning include: weakness, nausea, vomiting, headache, cramps, thirst, pain in the abdomen and gastrointestinal tract. In the future, there is a disorder of blood circulation and vision, loss of consciousness, signs of jaundice are manifested.
Often confused:
Often, a pale toadstool is confused with edible mushrooms - green and scaly russula, greenfinch, caps and floats. But according to certain signs, they differ.
Young pale grebe can be confused with greenfinch, but there is no ring, no cup-shaped Volvo, plate yellowish-green in color.
Russula has no ring and no thickening at the base of the leg. If the pale grebe is thrown into the brine along with the russula, then it will stand out with its plates, which are pure white and stick to the hat, and will also stand out in flabby and thin flesh.
Some inexperienced mushroom pickers may confuse a pale grebe with a white float. But the float does not have a ring on the leg and the edge of the cap is striped and ribbed.
Also, white pale grebe is confused with champignons. But in champignons, unlike the pale grebe, the plates are pink, light brown or blackish-brown, the leg is shorter and does not have a cup-shaped Volvo at the end.