Death cap mushrooms: As Erin Patterson is found guilty - are death caps in the UK?
Erin Patterson’s murder tool is no novelty - death cap mushrooms have been recognised as deadly and used as weapons for millennia.
The Australian woman has today been found guilty of poisoning members of her estranged husband’s family with beef Wellingtons laced with death caps, which she had foraged.
Erin Patterson denied charge, and said it was a tragic accident, but the jury found enough holes in her story - she cooked individual portions rather than one large Wellington, and threw out a food dehydrator which she claimed never to have owned, to convict her.
What are death cap mushrooms?
The death cap mushroom, which has the scientific name Amanita phalloides, is from the Amanitaceae family. It fruits from July to November and is most often seen in deciduous woods, in widely spaced groups, and tends to flourish under oak and beech trees.
It is fairly common in the UK, and can grow up to 15cm across and 15cm tall with a domed or white cap on an off-white stem, according to the UK’s Woodland Trust. The trust says: “Although it looks fairly inoffensive and similar to a number of edible mushrooms, it is deadly poisonous.”
It has a shiny olive-yellow to greenish-bronze cap, and is at first dome shape before it matures and flattens. It smells “sickly sweet and rancid” when old, though at the button stage is virtually odourless.
Squirrels and rabbits are not affected by the death cap’s poison.
What happens if you eat a death cap mushroom?
Eating just one death cap mushrooms is enough to result in death.
Symptoms usually tend to appear six to 24 hours after being ingested, and can include stomach pain, nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea. Symptoms can then settle, but by then the toxins will have entered the circulatory system and started to cause serious harm. Two to four days after the mushrooms being consumed, those severely poisoned will develop liver failure that may ultimately result in death.
Death cap mushrooms in history
The Romans and Greeks knew all about the fungi’s properties
Agrippina is said to have murdered her husband, Roman Emperor Claudius, by mixing death cap juice with Caesar’s mushrooms. He died of poisoning a few days after the meal. Voltaire claimed that Charles VI died by death cap poisoning. The Woodland Trust adds: “Thousands more have died when mistaking deathcaps for edible mushroom species, especially at the button stage.”