Chanterelle
No known toxinsCantharellus species · also called golden chanterelle, girolle
Chanterelles are among the most sought-after wild mushrooms and the reason many people start foraging. They are also the source of one of the most common poisonings, because jack-o'-lanterns are a similar colour. The distinction is not colour at all — it is what is under the cap, and whether the mushroom is on soil or on wood.
Quick facts
- If eaten
- No significant toxins documented, and widely eaten. That is not permission — this site cannot see your mushroom, and lookalikes exist. Confirm with an experienced local forager or a mycological society before eating anything.
- Under the cap
- ridges
- Spore print
- cream, white
- Cap
- Egg-yolk to apricot yellow, irregularly wavy and vase-shaped when mature, with an inrolled margin when young.
- Stem
- Solid, paler than the cap, tapering downward, with the ridges running down onto it.
- Growing on
- soil, hardwood litter, conifer litter
- Season
- Summer through autumn.
How to identify it
- Blunt forking ridges, not blades. Run a finger across: ridges feel soft and rounded, and cannot be peeled cleanly off the cap.
- The ridges run down the stem rather than stopping at it.
- Grows singly or scattered from soil, never clustered on wood.
- Often a distinct apricot smell.
What it is confused with
One test settles each of these.
True gills, growing clustered on wood. Chanterelles have blunt ridges and grow singly from soil.
False chanterelle
False chanterelle has thin, crowded, forking true gills and a browner, felty cap.
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.