The fly agaric earned its name by being crumbled into milk to kill flies
The red, white-spotted toadstool of fairy tales and Super Mario is a real and poisonous fungus. Its common name probably records an old household trick, sprinkling it into milk as a fly killer, first written down by Albertus Magnus before 1256. Another theory ties 'fly' to a medieval belief that insects in the head caused madness.
Amanita muscaria is a large, white-gilled mushroom native to the temperate and boreal forests of the Northern Hemisphere, where it lives in partnership with trees. It has since become naturalised south of the Equator and spreads invasively in places. Its genetic variety is so great that it may actually be a complex of several species.
The insecticide custom was recorded in German- and Slavic-speaking regions, parts of France and Romania. The botanist Carolus Clusius traced it to Frankfurt, and Linnaeus knew it from Smaland, where he grew up; in 1753 he named the fungus Agaricus muscarius, from Latin musca, fly. Lamarck moved it into Amanita in 1783. Not everyone was convinced: the French mycologist Pierre Bulliard tried and failed to kill flies with it in 1784. Chemists later found a compound in the fungus that attracts insects, and some have even suggested flies seek it out to get intoxicated. Supporting the madness theory, regional names in Catalan and Italian dialects call it the 'mad' version of the prized edible Caesar's mushroom, and in Fribourg it is the Devil's hat.
It is poisonous because of psychoactive compounds, chiefly muscimol and ibotenic acid, and children and people seeking hallucinations are most at risk, though deaths are extremely rare. Indigenous Siberian peoples used it as an inebriant and in spiritual practice. Popular claims connecting it to Santa Claus, Viking berserkers or the Vedic drink soma rest on sparse, disputed evidence. Growing use as a hallucinogen in the 2020s has drawn government attention.
Artists have featured it since the Renaissance. It turns up in Disney's Fantasia of 1940, and it shaped depictions of altered perception, most famously in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Taxonomically, it is the type species of its genus, heading a section of close relatives such as the panther cap, a grouping molecular studies have confirmed as natural.
Source: Amanita muscaria
