Fairy Ring Champignon
No known toxinsMarasmius oreades · also called scotch bonnet
The mushroom that makes rings in lawns. It is edible and widely eaten in Europe, and it grows in exactly the same place as several toxic species — which makes lawn mushrooms one of the more dangerous foraging situations rather than one of the safest.
Quick facts
- If eaten
- No significant toxins, but lawns also produce Clitocybe species containing muscarine and small brown mushrooms that are genuinely dangerous. Small brown lawn mushrooms are among the worst categories for a beginner to attempt.
- Under the cap
- gills
- Spore print
- white, cream
- Cap
- Small, tan to buff, bell-shaped then flattening with a low central bump, drying paler.
- Stem
- Slender, tough and wiry — it twists rather than snapping.
- Growing on
- grass
- Season
- Spring through autumn.
How to identify it
- Stem is tough and wiry and twists rather than snapping cleanly.
- Well-spaced gills that are free of the stem.
- Growing in arcs or rings in mown grass.
- Revives its shape after drying and rewetting, which few small lawn mushrooms do.
What it is confused with
One test settles each of these.
Ivory funnel
Clitocybe rivulosa grows in the same rings, has crowded gills running down the stem, and contains muscarine. It has caused serious poisonings.
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.