It is about Amanita muscaria , popularly called fly swatter or false oronja . It is a poisonous mushroom that grows in black pine, beech and birch forests , on the slopes of the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Himalayas and other mountain ranges. Deep red in color with white dots , it has become the most popular mushroom for its constant appearance in children's iconography in fairy tales and magical stories about gnomes and goblins.
This mushroom is a powerful hallucinogen , known for several millennia throughout the world and used mainly in religious rituals by Hindus and Siberian shamans. The Vikings also drank an elixir made from the mushroom to have strength in battle and not feel pain or fatigue. The consumption of the mushroom causes a kind of euphoric drunkenness with hallucinations, frequently macropsia (tendency to see objects larger than they really are) or micropsia (the opposite effect). This fact probably inspired Lewis Carroll when he decided to give the "dream mushroom" that Alice took in Alice in Wonderland the ability to shrink and enlarge objects.
