Amanita virosa · Amanitaceae
Pure white, elegant and lethal. The one to check for whenever you pick a white mushroom.
Deadly poisonous. DEADLY. The same amatoxins as the Death Cap, with the same delayed onset and liver failure. Field mushrooms have PINK to BROWN gills and no volva.
Read the full foraging safety guidance.
July to October
Young field and horse mushrooms, and button-stage puffballs. The gills give it away: white gills at all ages means stop.
Never eat. Teach anyone who forages with you to recognise it.
Cortinarius rubellus
A modest orange-brown mushroom whose poison destroys the kidneys weeks after the meal.
Galerina marginata
A small brown mushroom on dead wood carrying the same toxins as the Death Cap.
Paxillus involutus
Once eaten widely in Europe, now known to cause a fatal immune reaction that builds up over repeated meals.
