A 40-year-old woman has died after eating highly poisonous wild mushrooms picked from a botanic garden in the Isle of Wight.

A second woman in her twenties is seriously ill at St Mary’s Hospital, Newport, where her condition was described yesterday as stable and conscious.

The names of the two, who are related, were being withheld last night. They are believed to have tasted the fungi — possibly death cap mushrooms — on Monday after the younger woman had collected them during a visit to Ventnor Botanical Garden the previous day.

Police were called to the older woman’s home in Newport just after 7am yesterday. Despite efforts to revive her she was pronounced dead by paramedics.

Times Archive, 1972: A guide to all manner of mushrooms

Those who maintain that fungi are all right to eat if a silver spoon has been cooked with them and remains untarnished may find out the truth to their cost

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An hour later officers were called to a second house just over a mile away, where they found the younger woman in need of emergency medical treatment.

Police said that the younger woman told them how she had picked handfuls of wild mushrooms with her husband at the garden on Sunday.

The death is not being treated as suspicious. Officers have recovered mushrooms from the woman’s home, which are being investigated.

Isle of Wight Council, which runs the garden, said in a statement: “While the circumstances are currently being investigated, it appears a large quantity of wild mushrooms, including the toxic death cap mushroom, were collected from the vicinity of Ventnor Botanic Garden earlier this week and subsequently eaten.

“The death cap mushroom is not cultivated by Ventnor Botanic Garden — no mushrooms or fungi form part of the displays — but is believed to have been growing wild in the 22-acre site. Death cap mushrooms are a common species found all over the island and the UK.”

The Ventnor Botanic Garden site was closed for several hours as a precaution this morning as police carried out their investigation.

Inspector Colin Hall said: “The cause of the first woman’s death, and the second woman’s illness, has not been confirmed yet. But officers are concerned about a possible link with the picking and eating of wild mushrooms.

“Officers have been told that these mushrooms have not been passed on to any other people, but I’m appealing to anyone who picks wild mushrooms without expert knowledge not to eat them.”

A spokesman for the garden said: “The wet weather at the moment has been perfect for the mushrooms to grow. We are currently carrying out tests to find out what kind of mushrooms they were.”

The woman’s death comes just two weeks after the author Nicholas Evans and three of his family fell ill after eating wild mushrooms. Evans, 58, who wrote The Horse Whisperer, was on holiday in the Scottish Highlands with his wife, Charlotte, her brother, Sir Alistair Gordon-Cumming, and his wife, Lady Louise.

The group all ate Cortinarius speciosissimus, a rare type of fungus that can cause renal failure. They received dialysis and other kidney treatment at hospital.

Britain has more than 20 types of toxic fungi, including fly agaric, deadly webcap and destroying angel. If eaten such species can be fatal. They carry a risk of severe stomach upsets and kidney and liver damage, and can slow down the heart rate.

The death cap is among the most dangerous of about 10,000 species of mushroom found in Britain. It does not start producing clear symptoms until after it has caused liver damage.

Even among the non-toxic fungi, a few species are indigestible if eaten raw, and others may cause allergic reactions.

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