Talk:Lethal webcaps

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I'll try to take some better pictures of the deadly webcap when I go hiking this weekend. The fool's webcap doesn't grow here, so if someone else has a picture of it we can use, that would be great.

Sadly the season seems to be over and all the deadly webcaps I've come across (around 10-20 specimens) seem to be partially rotted and hardly usuable for a picture. Therefore I won't be able to get a good picture until next year. If someone else should have a nice picture, please upload it.

Michaelll 16:58, 13 October 2005 (UTC) Michael

Seems someone has uploaded a nice picture, thanks. mic 02:20, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] World's most poisonous?

I doubt it. I added the LD50 number: 2 g/kg for freeze-dried mushrooms. Since mushrooms are about 90% water, this would be 20 g/kg for fresh deadly webcaps, or what is the convention for LD50 specifications? Anyway, I thought that amanita phalloides and amanita virosa were the most poisonous mushrooms on earth. Han-Kwang 20:06, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps in mg/kg Alpha-amanitin is the most potent, but the latency of orellanine causes a lot of extra damage as the victims aren't treated until the damage is done, maybe? I'm not really sure, I got the reference 'The worlds most poisonous mushroom' from a page belonging to the botanical museum/University of Olso (http://natmus.uio.no/botanisk/bot-mus/giftsopper/cor_rub.html) where the first line says (translated to English): 'Cortinarius rubellus - lethal (the worlds most poisonous mushroom along with cortinarius orellanus)'. If you want to remove the statement I won't protest, long as its toxicity and the fact that it can be lethal is adequately presented.

Related, I'm working on moving most of the information about toxicity into the Orellanine article, and just mention a few words about it in the lethal webcaps article with a link to the main article (Orellanine), so if you'd be so kind and write your information about the LD into that article your efforts would be greatly appreciated :). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Michaelll (talk • contribs).

From http://www.emedicine.com/ped/topic76.htm : A single gram of fresh A phalloides can yield approximately 0.2-0.4 mg of alpha-amanitin. The lethal dose is less than 0.1 mg/kg. -- So the LD50 for fresh A. phalloides is 0.25--0.5 g/kg . You have a point with the latency. My (nonscientific) mushroom books say that a-amanitin is untreatable, although that info seems to be outdated. Han-Kwang 22:40, 6 July 2006 (UTC)