Also called 'funeral bell.' Contains the same amatoxins as the death cap. Here is the symptom timeline and what to do next.
"Deadly Galerina" is a common English name for Galerina marginata, a small, brown, ringed, wood-loving mushroom that grows in clusters on rotting logs and wood-chip mulch. In older field guides you will also see Galerina autumnalis or Galerina venenata. A 2005 molecular study by Gulden and colleagues in Mycologia merged those names into a single species. Different labels, same poison, same danger.
For the species profile — cap size, gill colour, spore print, habitat — see Galerina marginata: the deadly psilocybin look-alike. This page focuses on symptoms and what to do, not identification.
No symptoms. You feel completely normal. Alpha-amanitin is already binding RNA polymerase II inside your liver cells, but cell death has not begun visibly. This is the window where treatment works best and the window when people wrongly assume they are fine.
Sudden, severe vomiting. Cholera-like watery diarrhoea. Abdominal cramps. Dehydration develops fast. The American College of Emergency Physicians flags this presentation as one of the specific patterns that should raise amatoxin suspicion, especially with a delayed onset past 6 hours.
GI symptoms fade. Patients feel dramatically better and want to leave the hospital. Meanwhile, liver enzymes are climbing — AST, ALT, bilirubin, INR — and hepatocyte death continues silently. Discharging a patient here is a well-documented cause of preventable death.
Jaundice, coagulopathy, hypoglycaemia, encephalopathy, acute liver failure. Renal failure often follows. Survival depends on early supportive care, silibinin (Legalon) if available, N-acetylcysteine, and access to a liver transplant centre.
Yes. Case reports and NAMA registry data document fatalities from Galerina marginata in adults, children, and pets. Beug and colleagues summarised over 2,000 cases in the NAMA case registry and identified amatoxin-containing species (Amanita, Galerina, some Lepiota) as the leading cause of mushroom-related fatalities in North America. A frequently cited case series by Mullins and Horowitz in Veterinary and Human Toxicology (2000) describes a Michigan family that ate Galerina thinking it was a "magic mushroom"; one required a liver transplant.
There is no single antidote. Standard hospital management for suspected amatoxin poisoning, per clinical toxicology references, typically includes:
For the full clinical picture, see our amanitin poisoning guide.
Wild-picked "magic mushroom" foragers hunt in the same habitat where Galerina grows — rotting wood, mulch beds, hardwood chip landscaping. Wood-loving Psilocybe species (P. cyanescens in the Pacific Northwest, P. subaeruginosa in Australasia) share Galerina's small brown cap, cluster habit, and ring. Field guides are not enough to tell them apart safely. The single feature that discriminates is the spore print — rusty brown for Galerina, purple-black for every Psilocybe.
See our comparison pages:
Galerina clusters are tight — five to twenty caps growing shoulder-to- shoulder on the same log or chunk of mulch. The mushroom is hygrophanous: soaking wet after rain it looks caramel-cinnamon, dried out it fades to a pale ochre and looks almost like a completely different species. This colour instability is a common source of misidentification. A dried Galerina cap still contains fully active alpha-amanitin.
If your interest is psilocybin therapy or a legal psilocybin experience, wild foraging is not the safer route — legally or medically. Oregon's Measure 109 service centres and Colorado's Prop 122 healing centres exist to route adults around this exact risk. Jamaica permits legal psilocybin retreats. See:
Slowly at first. Symptoms usually start 6 to 24 hours after ingestion — much later than most food poisoning. That long, silent gap is what makes it deadly. By the time patients feel sick, damage has been underway for hours.
Sudden, severe vomiting and watery diarrhoea, usually 6 to 24 hours after eating. Any GI symptoms in that specific delayed window after a mushroom meal should be treated as amatoxin poisoning until a poison centre or toxicology consult rules it out.
There is no single approved antidote. Intravenous silibinin (Legalon), N-acetylcysteine, aggressive IV fluids, and early transfer to a liver transplant centre are the standard combined approach. Outcomes are best when treatment starts before the false-recovery window on day 2.
"Funeral bell" is another common name for Galerina marginata. Same species as "deadly Galerina" and "autumn skullcap." The name is a warning label, not a curiosity — cases of confusion with psilocybin mushrooms are documented every year.
No. Amatoxins are only harmful if ingested. Handling one, taking a spore print, or photographing it is safe. Wash your hands afterwards as a general kitchen-hygiene practice.
Assume any small brown mushroom on wood mulch is a candidate and call the ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center at 888-426-4435 or a 24-hour emergency vet immediately. Bring a sample. Dogs progress through the same biphasic amatoxin poisoning and die without aggressive early treatment.
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