Mushroom identification key

Answer whatever you can. Cap colour is asked last and never eliminates anything — it is the least reliable feature a mushroom has, and it is what photograph-matching relies on.

Read this before anything else

Never eat a wild mushroom identified by a website or an app.That includes this one. These tools narrow possibilities; they cannot see your mushroom, its base, its smell or its habitat, and the difference between a meal and a liver transplant is sometimes a feature buried in the soil.
Get it confirmed in person by an experienced local forager or a mycological society. Most regions have one, most run free identification sessions, and they will look at the actual specimen.
Dig, do not pull. The cup at the base of a death cap is often underground. Pulling the mushroom leaves the most important feature in the soil.
If someone has eaten a wild mushroom and feels unwell, call poison control now — in the US, 1-800-222-1222. Do not wait for symptoms to worsen. Amatoxin poisoning has a false recovery phase, and delayed treatment is what makes it fatal. Save any uneaten pieces for identification.

1.What is under the cap?

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The first and most important branch in any mushroom key. Gills are thin blades you could peel off; ridges are blunt, forking and part of the cap flesh. Getting this wrong is how chanterelle poisonings happen.

2.What colour is the spore print?

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The one test that separates several deadly species from their edible lookalikes, and it costs nothing but a few hours. Cap face down on half white and half dark paper, covered with a bowl, overnight.

3.What is it growing on?

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Highly diagnostic and easy to check. A mushroom on wood and a mushroom on soil are rarely the same thing, even when they look identical.

4.Any of these present?

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A ring and a cup at the base together mean Amanita, the genus responsible for most fatal poisonings. Dig the mushroom up rather than pulling it, or you will never see the cup.

5.What colour is the cap?

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Last, and it never removes anything from the list. Cap colour varies with age, weather and light, and rain washes the warts off a fly agaric entirely.

15 possibilities

Answer any question to begin