Delicious, Deadly, Deceptive Deathcap Mushroom
Already, underground along the margins of our pasture, the thready future of our largest mushroom is taking shape. And with the first warm weeks of spring, the plate-sized yellow parasols of this fungus will appear, off and on, for six months. This is certainly the most visible mushroom around, and very familiar–the Deathcap (or Deathcup) mushroom, Amanita phalloides–a species name that I cannot verify to mean of or resembling a…well I can’t confirm that so maybe it was named after J Alfred Phallo. Who …