the.com/toadstool
nature's pretty little liar, wearing red so you know it means business.
means A poisonous or inedible mushroom, especially a showy capped fungus that looks like the kind of thing you should never eat.
from A blunt old compound from English: 'toad' plus 'stool.' The 'stool' here means a seat, so the whole word literally pictures a toad's chair — and toads, long lumped in with poison and witchcraft, lent the fungus its sinister reputation. The image is medieval-flavored and folk-logical: a damp little perch fit for a warty, supposedly venomous creature. There's no botanical line dividing 'toadstools' from edible 'mushrooms'; the split lives entirely in language and suspicion.
- fairy rings
- They grow in expanding circles centuries old underground.
- name origin
- Toads were thought to perch on poisonous ones.
- amanita muscaria
- The classic red-and-white cap is genuinely hallucinogenic.
- no clear line
- Botanically, no real difference from edible mushrooms exists.
- reindeer link
- Siberian reindeer seek and eat the intoxicating caps.
fly agaric — iconic red-and-white spotted mushroom (amanita muscaria) found across northern hemisphere, hallucinogenic
death cap — amanita phalloides mushroom responsible for ~90% of mushroom poisoning deaths worldwide
destroying angels — amanita virosa species in australia that killed 12 people in 1953 alone