Destroying Angel
Can killAmanita bisporigera and relatives · also called death angel
An entirely white Amanita containing the same amatoxins as the death cap. Its uniform whiteness makes it look benign, and it is the species most often confused with young button mushrooms and with edible white Amanitas in other parts of the world. Everything about the death cap's toxicity applies here.
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.
Quick facts
- If eaten
- Deadly. Amatoxin poisoning with the same delayed onset and false-recovery pattern as the death cap. Emergency treatment is required and outcomes depend heavily on how early it starts.
- Under the cap
- gills
- Spore print
- white
- Cap
- Pure white throughout, smooth and dry, sometimes slightly domed then flattening.
- Stem
- White, often slightly shaggy, with a delicate ring near the top and a prominent membranous cup at the base.
- Growing on
- soil, hardwood litter, conifer litter
- Season
- Summer and autumn.
How to identify it
- Completely white — cap, gills, stem and spore print.
- Ring on the stem and a membranous sac at the base.
- Growing from the ground, never on wood.
- Gills free of the stem, not running down it.
What it is confused with
One test settles each of these.
Agaricus gills turn pink then chocolate brown and the spore print is brown. Destroying angel gills stay white forever, and it has a volva.
Slice it vertically. A puffball is featureless white; an Amanita button shows a mushroom shape inside.