UK species guide

A small brilliant violet mushroom of leaf litter, edible but slight and known to take up arsenic.

A reliable and common bolete: rich bay-brown cap and pores that bruise blue-green at a touch.

Once eaten widely in Europe, now known to cause a fatal immune reaction that builds up over repeated meals.

A cream coloured mass of wavy lobes at the base of pines, looking like a bath sponge or a cauliflower.

Egg-yolk yellow, trumpet-shaped and smelling faintly of apricots. One of the safest and finest edibles once learned.

Vivid sulphur-yellow and orange brackets on standing trees, with a texture famously like chicken breast.

Edible in itself, but it causes a violent reaction with alcohol taken up to three days later.

A modest orange-brown mushroom whose poison destroys the kidneys weeks after the meal.

Responsible for the great majority of fatal mushroom poisonings worldwide. Learn this one before anything else.

Pure white, elegant and lethal. The one to check for whenever you pick a white mushroom.

A pasture mushroom with a dull buff cap and an unmistakable violet-blue stem.

The classic mushroom of unimproved pasture: white cap, pink gills darkening to brown, and a clean mushroomy smell.

The classic red and white toadstool. Hallucinogenic and poisonous. Admire it, do not eat it.

A small brown mushroom on dead wood carrying the same toxins as the Death Cap.

An unmistakable white football in a field. Excellent eating while the flesh is pure white throughout.

Buff coloured with soft spines instead of gills. Almost impossible to confuse with anything dangerous.

A large relative of the field mushroom, smelling of aniseed and bruising slowly yellow in a harmless way.

Rubbery brown ears growing on elder all year round. The same species sold dried in Chinese cookery.

Shell-shaped tiers on dead broadleaf wood, often after the first cold snap.

A tall, elegant mushroom with a snakeskin stem and a cap that opens like a parasol.

The most sought-after wild mushroom in Britain: nutty, firm and richly scented, with a pale bun-like cap and a fat netted stem.

A shaggy white column that dissolves itself into black ink within a day of opening.

Dense sulphur-yellow clusters on stumps all year. Very common, very bitter, and toxic.

Small, hollow-stemmed and abundant in late autumn moss, often carpeting whole banks.

A late-season woodland mushroom with a striking lilac flush and a perfumed smell.

A field-mushroom lookalike that turns bright chrome yellow when cut and makes most people ill.