Poisonous mushrooms

There have been some serious mushroom poisonings in New Zealand which could have been avoided if people had been educated as to what is edible and what is not. These A3 posters by Ian Hall and John Fountain were originally produced for the New Zealand National Poisons Centre. ALL RIGHTS ARE RESERVED but we are happy for schools to print these for educational purposes. Simply left click on the pdf file, left click on the disk icon, save to a pen drive and then take this into a print shop and ask them to print it - you may wish to take a copy of this web page with you to show that we have given permission to print.

Also below is a pamphlet we have produced in Chinese, English and Vietnamese on the death cap. Again ALL RIGHTS ARE RESERVED but we are happy for you to print this pamphlet for educational purposes.

More on poisonous mushrooms

Death cap

The death cap (Amanita phalloides) and some similar species like the destroying angel (Amanita virosa) and panther cap (Amanita pantherina) are extremely toxic. Under no circumstances should you eat these. However, people have mistaken them for an edible puffball, the straw mushroom (Volvariella volvacea) or a white Leucoagaricus.

Some background information on the death cap is contained in our pamphlet in Chinese, English and Vietnamese. Just click on the image to the right to download the pdf file. The text is by Ian R. Hall and John Fountain and the translations were prepared by Minh Quang Tran (Vietnamese) and Xiong Wei Ping (Chinese, Tibet Academy for Agriculture and Animal Sciences).

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