AUTUMN MUSHROOM BOUNTY

Dappled light caresses this mature Fly Agaric, Amanita muscaria, mushroom caught unaware beneath a bit of camouflaging foliage. 

These iconic toadstool denizens of our Oak and coniferous forests are both fetching and poisonous. 

You can eat them as hazardous haute cuisine with a bit of preparation — parboil them twice, each time with fresh water then nibble carefully before you go all in — but they are arguably better utilized as a photographic subject.

Folk will do what they do, but I place these colourful mushrooms firmly in the do not eat category. If you break them apart and put them in any type of liquid that attracts flies, the flies will die from ibotenic acid poisoning — hence the mushroom's common name, Fly Agaric. 

In Latin, they are Amanita muscaria, with musca meaning a fly. Albertus Magnus (c. 1200 – 15 November 1280), known as Saint Albert the Great or Albert of Cologne, was a German Catholic Dominican friar, philosopher, scientist, and bishop and arguably the greatest German philosopher and theologian of the Middle Ages. 

Magnus was the first to record it in his work De vegetabilibus sometime before 1256, commenting "vocatur fungus muscarum, eo quod in lacte pulverizatus interficit muscas," which translates to: "it is called the fly mushroom because it is powdered in milk to kill flies."