Galerina marginata, known colloquially as funeral bell, deadly skullcap, autumn skullcap or deadly galerina, is a species of extremely poisonous mushroom-forming fungus in the family Hymenogastraceae of the order Agaricales. It contains the same deadly amatoxins found in the death cap (Amanita phalloides). Ingestion in toxic amounts causes severe liver damage with vomiting, diarrhea, hypothermia, and eventual death if not treated rapidly. About ten poisonings have been attributed to the species now grouped as G. marginata over the last century. G. marginata is widespread in the Northern Hemisphere, including Europe, North America, and Asia, and has also been found in Australia. It is a wood-rotting fungus that grows predominantly on decaying conifer wood. The fruit bodies of the mushroom have brown to yellow-brown caps that fade in color when drying. The gills are brownish and give a rusty spore print. A well-defined membranous ring is typically seen on the stems of young specimens but often disappears with age. In older fruit bodies, the caps are flatter and the gills and stems browner. The species is a classic "little brown mushroom" – a catchall category that includes all small to medium-sized, hard-to-identify brownish mushrooms, and may be easily confused with several edible species. Before 2001, the species G. autumnalis, G. oregonensis, G. unicolor, and G. venenata were thought to be distinct from G. marginata due to differences in habitat and the viscidity of their caps, but phylogenetic analysis showed that they are all the same species. Taxonomy and naming What is now recognized as a single morphologically variable taxon named Galerina marginata was once split into five distinct species. Norwegian mycologist Gro Gulden and colleagues concluded that all five represented the same species after comparing the DNA sequences of the internal transcribed spacer region of ribosomal DNA for various North American and European specimens in Galerina section Naucoriopsis. The results showed no genetic differences between G. marginata and G. autumnalis, G. oregonensis, G. unicolor, and G. venenata, thus reducing all these names to synonymy. The oldest of these names are Agaricus marginatus, described by August Batsch in 1789, and Agaricus unicolor, described by Martin Vahl in 1792. Agaricus autumnalis was described by Charles Horton Peck in 1873, and later moved to Galerina by A. H. Smith and Rolf Singer in their 1962 worldwide monograph on that genus. In the same publication they also introduced the G. autumnalis varieties robusta and angusticystis.