 The 16th @-@ century Flemish botanist Carolus Clusius traced the practice of sprinkling it into milk to Frankfurt in Germany , while Carl Linnaeus , the " father of taxonomy " , reported it from Småland in southern Sweden , where he had lived as a child . He described it in volume two of his Species Plantarum in 1753 , giving it the name Agaricus muscarius , the specific epithet deriving from Latin musca meaning " fly " . It gained its current name in 1783 , when placed in the genus Amanita by Jean @-@ Baptiste Lamarck , a name sanctioned in 1821 by the " father of mycology " , Swedish naturalist Elias Magnus Fries . The starting date for all the mycota had been set by general agreement as January 1 , 1821 , the date of Fries 's work , and so the full name was then Amanita muscaria ( L. : Fr . ) Hook . The 1987 edition of the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature changed the rules on the starting date and primary work for names of fungi , and names can now be considered valid as far back as May 1 , 1753 , the date of publication of Linnaeus 's work . Hence , Linnaeus and Lamarck are now taken as the namers of Amanita muscaria ( L. ) Lam .. 
